Culture Beat

TOTP 31 MAR 1994

Posted on March 3, 2023 by 80stastic

It’s the end of March 1994 and new TOTP producer Ric Blaxill is implementing his ideas for the show slowly but surely. Unlike the ‘year zero revamp ‘ of 1991 which seemed to want to change everything all at once, this was more of an organic approach. Yes, he’d brought back some of the Radio 1 DJs overnight and ditched Tony Dortie and Mark Franklin without flinching but some things remained the same. The logo, theme tune and titles were unchanged and so was the day of broadcast. All of these elements would be replaced or shifted in time but for now it was essentially the same show. However, Blaxill did take the decision to ditch the Breakers section meaning there were less Top 40 singles showcased but there seemed to be more emphasis on getting artists into the actual TOTP studio in person. Of the 10 acts on this show, seven were in studio performances. He’d also started putting a personal, direct to camera message from the ‘exclusive’ artist at the top of the show beforethe titles had even got underway. Last week it was Salt ‘N’ Pepa and this time around it was the Bee Gees. Little alterations but alterations nonetheless.

We start though with Haddaway and his fourth consecutive UK hit single “Rock My Heart”. I think I’ve said this before but it seems like a real anomaly to me that this guy was in the charts in 1994 despite the fact that we’d only first become aware of him less than a year before. He was definitive 1993 in my head. After, switching to a ballad for his previous hit “I Miss You”, he was squarely back with the Eurodance formula for this one and it’s all very repetitive stuff. Not even his overly energetic backing dancers can liven this up. Haddaway was just about done after this No 9 hit. He did manage two further minor UK hits but his second album released in 1995 – “The Drive” – stalled completely and tanked over here though he did retain some of his European fanbase.

I should mention that tonight’s host is Bruno Brookes and that his hair by this point was taking on a life of its own. He’d always had a bit of a mullet back in his 80s heyday but the dawn of a new decade hadn’t persuaded him to go for an into the 90s haircut. No, Bruno went the other way and doubled down on long hair to the point that it seemed to be trying to form an enclosure around his face. Never mind Haddaway being an anomaly, Brookes was an uber – outlier.

Anyway, back to the music and sometimes it’s easy to think you know a song but you really don’t. What am I talking about? Well, you can identify a song when it comes on the radio easily enough because you’ve heard it enough times to be buried in your memory banks but do we know how it came about, its origins, the motivations behind its composition, what are the lyrics actually about? Here’s an example…”Say Something” by James. Now, I might hear it and think “yes, that’s James. Unmistakably them from around the mid 90s I would imagine when they were having lots of hits”, tick myself as being correct and refile the song in my brain until the next time I hear it. Yet the hours and process that might have gone into bringing that song to the public maybe deserve more than that brief acknowledgment.

Why am I picking on James for this narrative? Well, after touring their fourth album “Seven” extensively it was time to return to the recording studio to begin work on their fifth “Laid”. Desperate to work with the legendary Brian Eno, their wish was granted and he duly agreed to act as producer. The band had historically always had song-storming sessions whilst jamming in their Manchester rehearsal rooms out of which the seeds of new tracks would be germinated. Eno observed this and thought that this organic (there’s that word again!) practice was just as valid for recording as the finished product and got the band to agree to letting him record said sessions as a second album, a companion piece to “Laid”. Originally meant to be released simultaneously or as a double album, reticence from their label meant it didn’t see the light of day until August 1994 when “Wah Wah” was released nearly a year after “Laid”. At 23 tracks and 68 minutes long, it divided opinion. To the casual fan who liked their big, anthemic hit singles, it wasn’t what was required but for the strong devoted it was a great insight into how the band worked and their motivations. Now, “Say Something” was actually track five on the “Laid” album but it was paired with a track called “Jam J” for release as a double A-side single which was track 3 on “Wah Wah”. There is a song on “Wah Wah” called “Say Say Something” but it bears no resemblance to its “Laid” counterpart. To further hammer home this point about song composition and not usually getting to know the full gestation period of a track, “Wah Wah” includes an early take of “Sometimes” which would become the second single released from 1997 album “Whiplash”.

As for the performance here, Tim Booth delivers a great vocal but it is combined with a strangely static stance with him only loosening up in the middle eight with some snake-hipped shimmying. The single would peak at No 24 and we won’t see/hear from them again for nearly three years when they would release “She’s A Star” as the first single from that “Whiplash” album.

A video now as we get to see the promo for “I’ll Remember” by Madonna again. Like The Beatles and The Clash before her, Madge didn’t really go in for personal appearances on the show. Off the top of my head there’s two from 1984 – her debut performing “Holiday” in the January, all armpits and bangles and then there’s the infamous pink wig appearance in December for “Like A Virgin”. A bit of digging in the internet tells me that over a decade later she was in the studio in November of 1995 to perform “You’ll See” from her ballads collection “Something To Remember” and 1998 saw her on the show twice for run throughs of “Frozen” and “The Power Of Goodbye”. I think that’s it for the 80s and 90s. Not many really when you consider her global reach and the amount of hits she had during that time. The new millennium brought a handful more of appearances before the show was axed in 2006.

Who said Eurodance acts all sound the same?! Well, I’m pretty sure I have at some point in this blog but just as Haddaway shook things up with a ballad for his third single, so Culture Beat lowered the bpm and mood for their fourth hit “World In Your Hands”. This was actually very different to all their previous stuff with an almost trip-hop backbeat and some very sombre raps courtesy of Jay Supreme. The whole track feels pretty dark watching it back. It’s almost Massive Attack-esque. Well, not quite but maybe ‘Medium Sized Rebuke’. Did we really need the very literal stage dressing of a massive spinning globe though? “World In Your Hands” peaked at No 20.

New producer or not, TOTP wasn’t going to turn its back on Eurovision and so here was the UK’s 1994 entrant – Frances Ruffelle with a song called “Lonely Symphony (We Will Be Free)”. Although the song was chosen two weeks earlier by a public telephone vote on A Song For Europe, Frances was already nailed on as the artist to sing it as she was pre-chosen for the gig. She actually performed all eight contending songs over four preview shows during a one week period in March. Although a new name to me, Frances actually came from a very showbiz background. Her Mum is Sylvia Young, founder of the legendary Sylvia Young Theatre School in London and Frances had already made a name for herself in her own right starring in West End productions Starlight Express and Les Misérables. She has furthered that showbiz legacy by being the mother of pop star Eliza Doolittle.

I have to say I don’t remember this song at all (can’t have bothered watching Eurovision that year) but it sounds like Culture Beat weren’t the only people who had been listening to Massive Attack. France’s song had a whiff of the trip hop collective – even the song title bears a resemblance to their most famous song! “Lonely Symphony” is nowhere near as memorable as “Unfinished Sympathy” though and that proved to be its undoing on Eurovision night as Frances trailed in a distant 10th place. It faired better on the UK singles chart where it peaked at a respectable No 25.

Twitter users watching this BBC4 repeat got themselves into a bit of a lather when they realised that Frances was wearing Union Jack underwear beneath her rather sheer dress. I wonder if a then 21 year old, pre-Spice Girls Geri Halliwell was watching back in 1994 and thinking “Hang on a minute. That’s interesting…”

Unlike the Breakers section , Ric Blaxill hadn’t jettisoned the ‘exclusive live by satellite’ slot and continued to keep perhaps misplaced faith with it in the same way that Todd Boehly still believes that Graham Potter is the best person to be my beloved Chelsea’s manager (for now). There’s no denying the size of the name who’s occupying that slot this week but yet again it seems to me to be a wholly uneventful…well…event.

As the onscreen caption states, Bruce Springsteen was enjoying his biggest ever hit with “Streets Of Philadelphia” which was up to No 2 by this point. Not only was the size of the hit impressive but also its longevity. It spent 7 weeks inside the Top 10 alone including a run of 4 where it placed no lower than No 3. Somehow though, The Boss couldn’t manage to topple some Dutch chancers who’d revived the Charleston from the top of the charts. The performance here might be interesting to Bruce aficionados (I know a few) but it’s a tad on the dull side isn’t it? OK, given the sombre mood of the track and the gravitas of the film it came from, you couldn’t expect Bruce to be jumping around stage as if he was singing “Dancing On The Dark” or something but it seems to disrupt the tempo of the show. The fact that it’s in black and white (mostly) doesn’t help. Maybe I’m missing the point. I probably am.

See, now Blaxill’s gone completely the other way mood wise. Talk about polar extremes! Some might say this was going from the sublime to the ridiculous. Get ready for S*M*A*S*H! Now, I spent the 90s working in record shops and so felt reasonably across what was happening in UK music but I have to admit that the ‘New wave of new wave’ was a scene that I don’t recall but it turns out that it was an actual thing and it wasn’t just some clever/nonsense line that Bruno Brookes came up with. Apparently some sort of Britpop forerunner, it was characterised by new bands who wore their original New Wave artists’ influences on their sleeves. All sounds a bit myopic to me. S*M*A*S*H were just one of the bands in the scene though the ones that I’m familiar with are surely more closely associated with Britpop – Sleeper, Echobelly, Shed Seven, Elastica…

So, S*M*A*S*H then. I’m assuming the name was a play on the title of Korean War based comedy drama M*A*S*H? They came from Welwyn Garden City, they made loud records with provocative, ban-inducing titles (“Lady Love Your C**t” anyone?) and somehow managed to get onto TOTP without having released a single (the first act ever to do so). Here’s @TOTPFacts on how they ended up on the show:

Although Pulp were hoping for a call that week ("Do You Remember The First Time?" had entered the top 40 at 33), #TOTP producer Ric Blaxill instead decided to take a punt on S*M*A*S*H, whose non-chart-eligible EP had charted in the album chart 28. "Shame" was the lead track.
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 24, 2023

S*M*A*S*H's Ed Borrie explains: "Our radio plugger… brought Ric Blaxill to see us in Luton at this sports hall… and then a couple of weeks later he had us on Top Of The Pops." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 24, 2023

Simples! OK, maybe not that simple. Their story does have a few more details. The song they performed here – “Shame” – was the lead track from an EP that chart regulations excluded from being eligible for the singles chart but which did qualify for the album chart where it reached No 26. They did finally get a proper hit single later in the year when “(I Want To) Kill Somebody” made No 26 but it’s controversial subject matter got it banned. Listening back to “Shame”, I have to say I don’t mind it. A bit derivative but then if you’re part of a scene whose name harks back to to another well established movement what do you expect? They seem like a prototype of the noisier moments of The Libertines. Just like their frontman Pete Doherty, I’m guessing S*M*A*S*H’s singer Ed Borrie had some issues with drug abuse given his wide-eyed, staring performance here. Surely he’d taken something beforehand? Sadly, I think I’m right. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:

S*M*A*S*H bassist Salvatore Alessi went on to join Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, while drummer Rob Hague was in These Animal Men.
Singer Ed Borrie, meanwhile, disappeared into (in his words) "North London's drug scene". #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 24, 2023

Happily, Ed is on better form now and is still doing live gigs having supported the likes of My Life Story in 2019. One last thing, how did they get away with singing “You’re girlfriend’s a bitch” on pre-watershed, prime time TV?

We move from Ric Blaxill shaking things up with a cutting edge new band to yet another extreme of giving a part of the pop establishment a pat in the back. Bruno Brookes stands in front of a huge disc that he’s presenting to the Bee Gees to mark 30 years in the business and 100 million sales worldwide. This bit of staging was another small change – hadn’t Simon Mayo stood with a load of 2 Unlimited gold discs the other week as a prop to introduce them? The massive disc only serves to make Bruno look even smaller than he actually is and seems to have made him stumble over his words in his segue. “With me three members of the Bee Gees…” he begins. Aren’t you missing a ‘the’ there Bruno? How many more members of the Bee Gees did you think there were? In truth, it’s all just a big set up to promote their latest single “How To Fall In Love Part 1” and what a curious thing it is. It never seems to get going properly and is so lightweight that it’s hardly there at all. Nowhere near as accessible as previous Top 5 hit “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, it was also nowhere near as successful peaking at No 30. Another curious thing about this was why does Barry Gibb sing the whole song with his right hand in his pocket?

It’s the final week at the top for Doop with “Doop”. Can we just try to forget that this ever happened and never talk of it again? Great.

The play out music is “How Gee” by Black Machine. Yeah, I haven’t a clue either but it sounds very familiar presumably because it’s made up of a load of samples from other songs? Seems that was the case. Here’s @TOTPFacts again:

Sampled in Black Machine's "How Gee": some sax from "Soul Power 74" by Maceo & the Macks (1974) https://t.co/FgVufeq7J6, and a snippet of "Sho Yuh Right Sho Yuh Right" by Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers (1985) https://t.co/ZvL0YvIFhN #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 24, 2023

… Plus vocals from "Rich Man" by St Paul (1987) https://t.co/V9gd5wYnQ7 and "Rock 'N Roll Dude" by Chubb Rock (1987) https://t.co/fwaJPsKxXM #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) February 24, 2023

Apparently they were an Italian electronic group that had a few hits in the 90s mainly in Austria and The Netherlands with “How Gee” being the biggest in the UK where it got to No 17. They’re the first act on the next show as well so heaven knows what I’ll find to write about them then!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Haddaway	Rock My Heart	Never happening
2	James	Say Something	Not the single but I have their Best Of album with it on
3	Madonna	I’ll Remember	Nope
4	Culture Beat	World In Your Hands	No
5	Frances Ruffelle	Lonely Symphony (We Will Be Free)	Not even patriotic duty made me buy this
6	Bruce Springsteen	Streets Of Philadelphia	Nah
7	SMASH	Shame	I did not
8	Bee Gees	How To Fall In Love Part 1	As if
9	Doop	Doop	See 1 above
10	Black Machine	How Gee	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001jf1w/top-of-the-pops-31031994

TOTP 13 JAN 1994

Posted on January 20, 2023 by 80stastic

Christmas and New Year are now distant memories – not just in 2023 but in 1994 where we currently find ourselves in the BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule. The charts have pretty much evacuated from their bowels all that Christmas stodge and some new songs are cleansing the Top 40. Well, I say cleanse but there are still some rotten tunes stinking the place out. Oh well, nose pegs at the ready then as we go again..,

We start with the previous year’s Eurodance sensation Culture Beat who are back with a third consecutive hit in “Anything”. There’s no let up in the formula here – they couldn’t have mixed things up with a ballad? – as Jay Supreme performs a high speed rap workout while vocalist Tania Evans chips in with a chorus including lyrics that seem to suggest desperation to please a (potential) partner. I’d like to think such themes were not prevalent today but toxic masculinity is on the increase with hateful figures like Andrew Tate generating headlines. I’m probably reading far too much into it but seeing Tania sing those words does jar a bit. On closer examination of the lyrics online, Jay Supreme seems to be having similar relationship problems where nothing he does, says or wears is good enough for his other half but he’s rapping so fast nobody can decipher what he’s on about. “Anything” was at its chart peak of No 5 already. They would never return to the Top 10.

Get those nose pegs ready as here’s a bona fide toilet bowel dweller in the form of “All For Love” by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting. This was proper dog shit, baked for the latest cinematic take on the Alexandre Dumas novel The Three Musketeers. I recall there being a big buzz about the film starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Oliver Platt and Chris O’Donnell in the titular roles and I, myself, duly went to see it. Sadly, like its song, it was no good, without merit and, in short, a stinker. There was something very cynical about casting Sheen and Sutherland together to reunite them in some sort of 17th century cousin to their Brat Pack western Young Guns (indeed, some reviewers christened the film ‘Young Swords’). This was just one of a long list of film adaptations of the famous story – I had no idea there were that many – but I’d take the cartoon from my childhood from The Banana Splits TV show over any of them.

Back to that song though and its protagonists were probably more of an unholy trinity than they were The Three Musketeers for many. Certainly there are a fair few musical crimes that can be levelled at Adams, Stewart and Sting individually (though some of all three’s back catalogue stands up to scrutiny) but this collective effort really is a low point. It probably sounded like a good idea in theory – three massive mainstream stars (the musketeers) record a song that borrows its title from the main characters’ motto (‘All for one and one for all’) but the actual song is such a dirge that it can’t fail but to reek. Composed by Bry and his go to songwriting partner Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange, who was also responsible for that other Adams turd “Please Forgive Me”, it really is an awful record. The film did decent business though and so the single was a huge hit off the back of it going to No 1 in the US and around the world though its peak of No 2 in the UK meant it wasn’t quite a case of all for one and one for all.

“All For Love” isn’t the only Three Musketeers inspired pop song though. “You’ve Got Everything Now” from the eponymous debut album by The Smiths features the line “I’ve seen you smile but I’ve never really heard you laugh” and borrows from a narrative description of the musketeer Athos

He was very taciturn, this worthy signor. Be it understood we are speaking of Athos. During the five or six years that he had lived in the strictest intimacy with his companions, Porthos and Aramis, they could remember having often seen him smile, but had never heard him laugh.
— Chapter 7, The Interior of the Musketeers, The Three Musketeers Project Gutenberg.

Proving that it’s not a total clean sweep of new songs in the charts, here’s K7 with “Come Baby Come”. Released in mid December back in ‘93, it would spend a giant sixteen weeks on the charts peaking at No 3. Despite the single’s success, K7 didn’t sustain. Indeed, if you Google K7 these days you will find an entry for him but behind results for an independent music label, a brand of power washer and alongside anti virus software.

What’s this? A Ce Ce Peniston hit that isn’t “Finally”? Well, there’s actually a few of them but to me they all sound like inferior re-writes of “Finally” including this one called “I’m In The Mood”. Nothing to do with The Nolans’ biggest hit but the lead single from her second album called “Thought ‘Ya Knew”. According to reviews at the time, this was meant to have a bit of a jazz slant to it but I’m not sure I can hear it. The single actually did OK chart wise making No 16 but the parent album, unlike her debut “Finally” which went Top 10, floundered to a high of No 31. I have to say that I don’t recall anything of this stage of Ce Ce’s career but she carried on gamely throughout the 90s releasing two more albums before the end of the decade to little reception before scoring one final hit in 1997 with a cover of Jocelyn Brown’s “Somebody Else’s Guy”.

How can I have forgotten about this?! The The on TOTP and I’ve erased it from my memory banks?! What was going on in my life at the time to have dislodged this from a special place in my grey matter?! So many questions but surely the biggest of the lot should be why isn’t Matt Johnson routinely lauded as a national treasure?! I first became aware of his genius in 1983 when I heard “Uncertain Smile”. Then I saw the striking artwork on the single’s cover in WH Smith and, even as a 15 year old pop kid, knew something special was going on here. By the time I was a Poly student, I had the first album “Soul Mining” in pride of place in my cassette collection to make me look…well, I’d have maybe said ‘trendy’ back then but probably I meant non mainstream (even though I hopelessly was).

The album also included the singles “Perfect” and “This Is The Day” and it was the latter of those two which was chosen as the main track on the “Dis-Infected EP”. Remodelled as “That Was The Day”, it was backed up by a take on the title track of 1986 album “Infected” plus remixes of two tracks from the most recent album at the time, 1992’s “Dusk”. Presumably this EP was released to maintain profile in between albums (Johnson’s album of Hank Williams cover versions – “Hanky Panky” – didn’t appear until 1995) and its No 17 peak would make it The The’s biggest ever hit just eclipsing 1989’s “The Beat(en) Generation”.

Coming after Culture Beat, K7 and Ce Ce Peniston in the running order, this incarnation of The The looks every bit the outlier on TOTP. Matt, for all his genius, never looked like a pop star bless him whilst the minimal set up of a keyboard player and a guy on harmonica were at odds with all the synchronised dance moves, rapping and general party atmosphere of the acts before. And thank God for that.

“This Is The Day” was covered in 2011 by Manic Street Preachers to promote their third compilation album “National Treasures – The Complete Singles” thus affording Matt Johnson a sliver of that national treasure status he so richly deserves.

Three Breakers this week starting with “Everyday” by Phil Collins. I don’t remember this at all and there’s a case to be made that I just count my blessings and leave it at that. The reviewer in me won’t allow that though (Damn you!) so I’m going in for a listen – this isn’t going to end well is it?

*manages two and a half minutes before switching off*

Well, it was, as I suspected, not worth the effort. According to Wikipedia, Phil played every musical part on this track which means it was him that ripped of Bruce Hornsby for the piano intro. After that it drifts off into predictable Collins territory with a melancholic melody and lyrics so rank and hackneyed that there should be a law against this form of song composition. Phil bangs on about being knocked off his feet and the fire inside him and his life being worth nothing without the object of his affections…turn it in mate! I can imagine it being used in a lame rom com movie starring Paul Rudd and Jennifer Anniston to soundtrack the bit where the film’s couple have broken up. Nice work for Phil but all rather cynical.

The song was the second single from his “Both Sides” album and though making a respectable chart high of No 15, possibly didn’t allay record company fears after lead single “Both Sides Of The Story” underperformed.

The era of Toni Braxton is upon us. A huge star straight off the bat in the US where “Another Sad Love Song” went Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, that single stalled on initial release over here meaning that “Breathe Again” would become her first UK Top 40 hit. And what a hit! It would eventually peak at No 2 over here which seemed like a slight case of overachievement for an R&B ballad. Clearly the song had something that set it apart from the other examples of the genre we had seen. It did ebb and flow quite nicely and Braxton could clearly deliver the required vocal. Even so, I for one was slightly taken aback by its popularity.

“Another Sad Love Song” was rereleased in this country in the wake of the success of “Breathe Again” and this time was a hit making No 15. However, Toni really came into her own in 1996 when she had another No 2 hit record in “Un-break My Heart”, a single that sold and sold and sold, spending nineteen weeks in total on the charts.

The final Breaker is a cover of a glam rock hit from the 70s courtesy of Def Leppard. Having taken five years to record a follow up to the multi platinum selling “Hysteria” album, these lads were not exactly prolific. “Adrenalize” had been a success but not on the same level as its predecessor and another studio album wouldn’t arrive until 1996. So, how to fill the gap? With a compilation album of course. However, Def Leppard wanted to give something back to the fans that was not just a boring Best Of that would just mean the completists forking out for tracks they already owned so they came up with “Retro Active”, an album of touched up B-sides and unreleased recordings from the band’s vaults. There were also a couple of cover versions including Mick Ronson’s “Only After Dark” and this one, a 1975 Top 20 hit from The Sweet called “Action”. I didn’t think I knew this song but having given both versions a spin, it did ring some bells in the deepest corners of my mind.

Is it just me or do The Sweet not get the recognition they deserve? Whenever glam rock gets mentioned, it seems that the first names to crop up are T-Rex, Slade, Wizzard and even Roxy Music (nobody can talk about Gary Glitter anymore for obvious reasons). Do The Sweet get overlooked slightly? In their early 70s heyday, they tore up the charts with songs like “Ballroom Blitz”, “Teenage Rampage” and “Block Buster!” clocking up ten Top 10 hits including a No 1 and five (!) No 2s making them one of the unluckiest bands ever. By the time of “Action” though, the hits were drying up. This would be one of their last with only a change of musical direction giving them one final Top Tenner with “Love Is Like Oxygen” in 1978.

Def Leppard do a decent version of “Action” though the original is easily better. After the almost philanthropic act of the “Retro Active” release, the band went and released a proper Best Of anyway in 1995 called “Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits (1980-1995) which became another platinum seller. It’s all about the Benjamins at the end of the day isn’t it?

Back in the studio we find Eternal who are consolidating on the success of debut single “Stay” with another mid tempo soul/pop track called “Save Our Love”. The buzz around this lot was still very vibrant coming out of Christmas and so another hit was almost guaranteed. “Save Our Love” duly did the business going Top 10 though falling short of the No 4 peak of its predecessor by four places. For me, this follow up was nowhere near as strong as their opener. Sure it was radio friendly with a shiny production but it didn’t have the nuance of “Stay”. It all felt a bit too straightforward – Eternal by numbers. Talking of numbers, the group still had its full complement of them at this stage but by the following year, Louise Redknapp (Nurding as was) would have left the group. She, along with her band mates, were kept busy in 1994 though releasing five singles and promoting their debut album “Always And Forever”.

I’m not sure what the petrol station vibe is all about for this performance. Can’t think of many other artists who have channeled it. Billy Joel was a mechanic in a garage for “Uptown Girl” wasn’t he so not quite the same. Oh yes though – mechanics or more specifically Mike And The Mechanics who used an image of a gas pump attendant asleep on some tyres next to his pump as the cover of their Best Of album entitled “Hits” in 1996. By the way, those combat trousers that Eternal are wearing were all the rage in 1994. I think I even had some. No doubt we’ll be seeing more examples of their popularity in future repeats.

The reggae Rick Astley next as studio tape operator/ tea boy turned pop star Bitty McLean is back with another hit. After the No 2 success of his debut single “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)”, it looked as though Bitty’s career was over almost immediately when follow up single “Pass It On” steadfastly refused to do so and stalled at No 35. However, here he was back with another hit in “Here I Stand” that would ultimately make No 10 despite being awful. It was another cover version (originally released by Justin Hinds And The Dominoes in 1967) but Bitty makes it sound completely tuneless in his rendition. I really didn’t get the appeal of Bitty and his music but I’m sure that he’s a lovely chap all the same!

It’s a second week at the top for Chaka Demus And Pliers with their version of “Twist And Shout” despite heavy competition from D:Ream who are up to No 2 this week. Apparently, “Twist And Shout” was selling less at the top of the charts than it was when lodged at No 3 at Christmas. The vagaries of the post festive season sales slump and all that.

There are, of course, many different versions of “Twist And Shout”. Here’s one from Bruce Springsteen which segues into “La Lamba”…

I’m sure I heard a story about the recording of The Beatles’ first album in which “Twist And Shout” wasn’t going to be included on it but a journalist told them that they should record “La Bamba” as he’d heard them do it live and it sounded great. The band responded that they didn’t play “La Bamba” in concert but realised the press guy was talking about “Twist And Shout” which they did perform live and that’s how it got onto the album. This is surely the definitive version of the song…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Culture Beat	Anything	Never happening
2	Bryan Adams / Rod Stewart / Sting	All For Love	NO!
3	K7	Come Baby Come	I did not
4	Ce Ce Peniston	I’m In The Mood	Nah
5	The The	Dis-Infected EP	No but I had the Soul Mining album which includes lead track This Is The Day
6	Phil Collins	Everyday	Double NO!
7	Toni Braxton	Breathe Again	Nope
8	Def Leppard	Action	Negative
9	Eternal	Save Our Love	It’s a no
10	Bitty McLean	Here I Stand	Never!
11	Chaka Demus And Pliers	Twist And Shout	No

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001h027/top-of-the-pops-13011994

TOTP 18 NOV 1993

Posted on November 26, 2022 by 80stastic

What were you doing twenty-nine years ago? I know, I know. It’s hard enough remembering why you’ve just come upstairs some days but I’m pretty sure that I had just begun working at the Our Price store in Altrincham, Cheshire. I’d been employed by the company for three years by this point and was onto my fourth different shop. I’d done nearly two years in Market Street, Manchester then a promotion saw me move to Rochdale for a year. A transfer to a bigger store in Stockport followed but it hadn’t really worked out for me. I never settled and found the whole place a bit overwhelming. When another move suddenly presented itself, I was relieved. Whether area management knew I was struggling and took pity on me I don’t know. I doubt it but I immediately felt better at Altrincham. It was a much smaller store (similar to Rochdale) and just felt more manageable. The staff were welcoming and I really got on with the manager Cathy. I think there were eight of us altogether including Christmas temps and it was a good little team. I loved it there in fact. Sadly, it would all come to an abrupt end immediately after Christmas but that’s for a future post. I wonder if any of the songs on this TOTP will ring any bells with me?

Well, this one should do. Not that I remember it specifically but because it sounds the same as all their other hits. I refer, rather obviously, to 2 Unlimited. I think it was all starting to wear a bit thin by this point wasn’t it? “Maximum Overdrive” was their eighth UK hit in a two year period five of which had made the Top 5 including the No 1 single “No Limit”… and they all sounded…the…same. Too harsh? OK, they all followed a very similar pattern then. I get that they might have gone down well on your local nightclub’s dance floor but could anybody have listened to a whole album full of this stuff?!

*checks 2 Unlimited’s discography*

What?! Two of their albums went to No 1 in this country (“No Limits!” and “Real Things”) selling 350,000 copies between them?! This can’t be true can it?! This is as baffling as who the hell voted for Matt Hancock to stay in the jungle that long!

https://youtu.be/J–XvsaSz6I

When I first saw Anita and Ray’s outfits for this performance – full black and white chequered leathers with a number 2 prominently displayed – I wondered if they’d gone all Two-tone but it was all to do with that motorbike at the back of the stage. Presumably that was meant to be a play on the theme of the single’s title with the backing dancers meant to be pit stop crew? Nah – this is how you incorporate motorbikes into your song. A masterclass from David Essex…

Why were the TOTP producers obsessed with informing us that artists that had been booked to appear in the studio could no longer do so because they were ill/indisposed so we’d have to make do with the video instead? Why bother telling us? Surely we wouldn’t have known they were meant to be there in person anyway would we? Methinks they protest too much. Unless…it was some sort of ploy to make the show still appear credible and valid by showing us that artists did still want to make the effort to appear in person – “we’re still the biggest music show on TV, honest we are!”. Anyway, that’s what happens here with Terence Trent D’Arby who was meant to be in the studio to perform his single “Let Her Down Easy” but had come down with a case of Beijing flu* according to host Tony Dortie so it’s the video instead.

*There was an actual epidemic of it in the winter of 1993/94 though whether TTD had actually contracted it or it was just Dortie trying to be topical I don’t know.

1993 had been quite a year for Terence on the quiet. A No 4 album in “Symphony Or Damn” which was also well received by the critics (it received a five star rating from Q Magazine) with four Top 20 singles from it that achieved these very consistent chart peaks:

14 – 16 – 14 – 18

“Let Her Down Easy” was the final one of the four and though I don’t remember it, I really should have as it’s a striking piece of music. Almost entirely a piano led composition (there’s some orchestration low in the mix) with just Terence’s pure, isolated vocal, it’s quite the stand out track even today. It got the attention of George Michael who knew his way around a decent tune and he performed it live on his 2011-12 Symphonica tour which was recorded for his 2014 “Symphonica” album.

Back in a Eurodance dominated 1993 though, the track must have seemed like a complete anomaly. It should have been a bigger hit but maybe it got caught up in the Christmas rush. I liked the diversity of the album’s four singles with each one quite different from the other. Like I said, he had quite the year in 1993 but Terence Trent D’Arby rarely gets a mention in retrospectives of those twelve months.

Remember in 2001 when Kylie Minogue grabbed herself a No 1 single with the insanely catchy “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”? Back then, we remarked on how clever the lyrics and title were in that they worked on two levels; the object of Kylie’s affection but also the ear worm that was the actual song. Eight years earlier Culture Beat pulled off a similar coup with “Got To Get It”. ‘Got to get it, got to get it out of my head’ they sang referring to a relationship that had ended but of course it could also have referred to the track itself. Culture Beat are, of course, mostly remembered for that bit of pop trivia about “Mr Vain” being the first UK No 1 not to be released on 7” vinyl whereas Kylie is known as the ‘Princess of Pop’ and revered as a style icon. Get that out of your head Culture Beat!

In 1996 Crowded House released a Best Of compilation called “Recurring Dream”. The TV ad campaign for the album used a tag line that was spoken by a voice over guy who said “you’ll know more songs than you think by Crowded House”. Clever stuff. However, here’s one of theirs that I don’t think most of us will know. I didn’t remember it and possibly Mr Voice Over Guy wouldn’t either as it’s not included in that “Recurring Dream” Best Of.

“Nails In My Feet” was the second track taken from the band’s “Together Alone” album and unlike its predecessor “Distant Sun” and subsequent release “Locked Out”, it didn’t seem like an obvious choice of single. It feels like it should be something special but flounders around in search of a tune and never actually finds one. The rather odd, almost off key middle eight that sounds a bit like the theme to 70s action-comedy series The Persuaders! doesn’t help either.

Neil Finn does his best to sell the song with an expressive performance but it just doesn’t work for me and I say that as someone who’s seen them in concert twice. “Nails In My Feet” was supposedly inspired by Finn’s purchase of a pair of sandals with nails in them that were used to aerate the grass on his home’s tennis court rather than any religious imagery and achieved a respectable chart peak of No 22.

https://youtu.be/ss2TgrfrVaw

Tony Dortie’s at it again next telling the viewers at home that U2 should have been in the TOTP studio but for reasons he doesn’t want to bore us with, they haven’t made it. Tony, you can’t makes statement like that and not give us the whole story. You could have said nothing and we’d have been none the wiser but the cat’s out of the bag now so you have to tell all!

1993 was an odd chapter in the U2 story. Having finished 1992 with accumulated sales of “Achtung Baby” standing at 10 million and ticket sales for the supporting Zoo TV Tour reaching 2.9 million, the band paused for breath as there was now a six month break before the tour resumed with the Zooropa leg. The problem was that the band weren’t ready to just stop after months of touring. As Bono explained it:

“We thought we could live a normal life and then go back on the road [in May 1993]. But it turns out that your whole way of thinking, your whole body has been geared toward the madness of Zoo TV… So we decided to put the madness on a record. Everybody’s head was spinning, so we thought, why not keep that momentum going…?
Scholz, Martin; Bizot, Jean-Francois; Zekri, Bernard (August 1993). “Even Bigger Than the Real Thing”. Spin. Vol. 9, no. 5. Spin Media LLC. pp. 60–62, 96.

With loops created from tour sound checks and unused “Achtung Baby” demos being employed as starting blocks for recording sessions, the next decision was what format this new material would be released as. A four track EP was the original idea but such was the speed of their creativity, Bono suggested a whole album. Then it all got very confusing. The track chosen to promote the “Zooropa” album was “Numb” but in an unexpected turn of events, it was only released as a VHS video. I recall we got a couple of copies in the Our Price store in Rochdale but I’m not sure if we sold any of them. The then chart rules disallowed its sales from counting on the record singles chart so it kind of sunk without trace. After that rather spectacular own goal, a second track was summoned from the bench to promote the album – “Lemon”. Then it was going to be a double A-side release with “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, Bono’s duet with Frank Sinatra. Then Ol’ Blue Eyes’ people wanted a stand alone release and then finally that track was paired with the confoundingly titled track “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)”. I do remember this coming out but twenty-nine years on, I couldn’t have told you how it went before re-listening to it. Now that I have listened to it again, I still can’t tell you so unmemorable is it. I don’t mind a bit of U2 now and again and you have to admire their longevity and willingness to reinvent themselves but this one is dreary as. Allegedly, Bono has previously labelled it as the band’s greatest song but I can’t hear it. It was actually written for the similarly titled Wim Wenders film Faraway, So Close! but I’ve never seen it.

I suppose I should say something about the Bono/Frank Sinatra duet as well seeing as the single seems to have been a double A-side. How did this come about? Well, Frank had maybe been talking to Elton John as, just like the ‘Rocket Man’, he’d recorded an album of duets and, also like Elt, just called it “Duets”. Featuring collaborations with the likes of Luther Vandross, Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett and Liza Minnelli, it sold well over the Xmas period peaking at No 5 in the UK. I say collaborations but it was a very mechanical process with Sinatra not actually being in the recording studio with any of his duetters at the same time. They sang along with his pre-recorded vocals with instructions to make their parts complement his. Frank ‘takin’ care of business’ as always. In that respect it was similar to the Natalie Cole (who appeared on the album with Sinatra on “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”) duet on “Unforgettable” with her deceased father Nat King Cole. The track “Under My Skin” recorded with Bono was chosen as a single to promote the album. Bono (along with the rest of the band) had already met Sinatra though in 1987 at a boxing match in Las Vegas between Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler. I bet Bono and the guys got a kick out of that.

The Breakers now beginning with DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince who are trying to follow up on the huge and slightly unexpected success of “Boom! Shake The Room” with new single “I’m Looking For The One (To Be With Me)”. This is yet another track that I have no memory of (clearly working in a record shop didn’t mean that I knew every song in the charts) but it sounds a bit like their previous hit “Summertime”. Even the home made style video is reminiscent of that track. Maybe that Summer vibe was a bit misplaced on a record released as Christmas was coming into view and perhaps that’s why it got nowhere near replicating the success of “Boom! Shake The Room” when it peaked at No 24.

This next song has quite the back story. “Demolition Man” was written by Sting in the Summer of 1980 as a potential track for The Police album “Zenyatta Mondatta”. When it didn’t make the album it was offered to Grace Jones who recorded it for her 1981 “Nightclubbing” album and released it as its lead single.

Thinking that they could do a better version themselves, the band recorded it for their next album “Ghost In The Machine”.

Then over a decade later, here it is again as a solo release from Sting to promote the film of the same name starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. As with Faraway, So Close! earlier, I’ve never seen it but reading its Wikipedia entry leads me to believe it’s one of those fun but dumb action movies that are good if you’re recovering from a hangover and have very little brain power available. The video has Sting rather gratuitously performing the song naked from the waist up with very little if any clips from the film inserted. One for his fan base there.

Sting of course has quite the connection with the world of movies. He’s acted in over a dozen films including Quadrophenia, Dune, The Bride and Stormy Monday and has contributed music to many a soundtrack. Aside from Demolition Man, he’s featured on Lethal Weapon 3 (“It’s Probably Me” with Eric Clapton), The Three Musketeers (“All Four Love” with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams), Stars And Bars (“Englishman In New York”) to name but three of a long list. There’s even a CD called “Sting At The Movies” that collects many of them together. The one burnt into my memory though is “Spread A Little Happiness” from Brimstone And Treacle in which he also starred. This seemed to be played all the time by Terry Wogan on his Radio 2 breakfast show which my Mum used to have on in the background on a school morning.

Oh the folly! Tony Dortie’s casual dismissal of the next act as “apparently once controversial” illustrates perfectly the smugness contemporary music has for its elders. Back in 1984, Frankie Goes To Hollywood were everything and everywhere, exploding onto the charts like nothing witnessed since The Beatles. Three No 1 records amounting to sixteen weeks at the top, every other person in the country wearing a ‘Frankie Says…T-shirt’, a Radio 1 ban for the corrupting nature of the lyrics to “Relax”, a video for “Two Tribes” featuring actors playing out a wrestling match between Reagan and Chernenko at the height of the new Cold War…according to Dortie that just warrants an “apparently once controversial” remark. Know your musical history mate!

Frankie were back in the charts in 1993 thanks to a Best Of album and the rerelease of the “Relax” single to promote it. After that had made No 5, record label ZTT decided it was worth reissuing another of their hits. Surely “Two Tribes”* was the obvious choice or even “The Power Of Love” seeing as Christmas was coming and it had that video but no – “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” was selected. Now, nothing against the song which still stands up today in my book but it does carry with it that stigma of being the first single by the band not to go to No 1 despite ZTT using an advertising campaign declaring it their fourth No 1 before it was even released. As it turned out, it couldn’t dislodge “Easy Lover” by Phil Collins and Philip Bailey and has retrospectively been deigned to be the beginning of the end for the Frankie phenomenon. The 1993 remix still managed a Top 20 position but it seemed a missed opportunity. As it turned out, “The Power Of Love” was hastily rush released the week before Christmas and achieved a high of No 10 but with a bit more thought, a longer lead in time and better promotion, could it have challenged for the Christmas No 1 or would the power of Mr Blobby have easily seen it off?

* “Two Tribes” was eventually rereleased in February of 1994 making it to No 16.

The final two Breakers were both featured in full length on the previous show and are both due to be on the following week so I’ll leave my comments short for both for fear of running out of things to say about them. The first is “Again” by Janet Jackson. After her live by satellite performance the other week, we get the video this time which was directed by René Elizondo Jr. As well as being Janet’s then husband, he is also the man whose hands are covering her breasts on the cover of the September 1993 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine that formed the expanded artwork for her “Janet” album. So now you know.

The final Breaker is from Elton John and Kiki Dee or ‘Alton’ John as Tony Dortie pronounces it. Their rendition of “True Love” is up to No 8 on its way to a high of No 2, not quite the Christmas No 1 the bookies were predicting as per Dortie’s intro. The video is clearly aimed at creating a Christmas vibe with Elton and Kiki wearing prominently placed winter scarves whilst the black and white film depicting them as the guardian angels of the lyrics reeks of It’s A Wonderful Life. Guiding the boy and girl love interests to ensure they don’t miss each other at the train station, the film suddenly turns colour as they find each other. OK, I can live with that but the nun dancing with a homeless looking fella? Really?!

https://youtu.be/sbry5Z8aEXM

Tony Dortie tries to increase his street cred next by getting Public Enemy into his next intro. However, that credibility is stretched to its limits when you realise he’s crowbarred the hip hop legends into a segue into a performance by soprano and opera singer Lesley Garrett. So what was going on here then? Well, Lesley teamed up with 12 year old pianist and leukaemia patient Amanda Thompson to record a version of “Ave Maria”, the Latin prayer set to music by Charles Gounod when he superimposed a melody over Bach’s “Prelude No 1 in C Major”. It was a charity record raising £160,000 for the Malcolm Sergeant cancer fund and came about after Amanda had featured heavily in the ITV documentary series Jimmy’s about St.James’s hospital in Leeds. I think Esther Rantzen was something to do with it as well. There was even some fanciful talk of this being the Christmas No 1 but it topped out at No16.

https://youtu.be/zh5Rs25kJMQ

Right, what are we up to now? Fourth week? Fifth? I’m losing count of how long Meatloaf’s been at No 1 with “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’tDo That)”. I suppose I should mention the incredible business parent album “Bat Out Of Hell 2: Back Into Hell” was also doing. In the UK alone it went six times platinum (1,800,000 sales) whilst in America it went five times platinum equating to 5,000,000 sales. Obviously it was also topped the album charts in both those territories. We sold a lot of it that Christmas in that little store in Altrincham. We did an end of year poll for the staff asking for their Top 3 albums of the year, fave single etc. “I’d Fo Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” was one member of staff’s pick. Didn’t see that coming.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	Maximum Overdrive	Never
2	Terence Trent D’Arby	Let Her Down Easy	Good song, didn’t buy it
3	Culture Beat	Got To Get It	See 1 above
4	Crowded House	Nails In My Feet	I did not
5	U2	Stay (Faraway, So Close!)	No
6	DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince	I’m Looking For The One (To Be With Me)	Negative
7	Sting	Demolition Man	Nope
8	Frankie Goes to Hollywood	Welcome To The Pleasuredome	Not in 1985 nor 1993
9	Janet Jackson	Again	Nah
10	Elton John / Kiki Dee	True Love	Of course not
11	Lesley Garrett / Amanda Thompson	Ave Maria	It’s a no from me
12	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’tDo That)	Unlike my Our Price colleague, no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001fh20/top-of-the-pops-18111993

TOTP 04 NOV 1993

Posted on November 13, 2022 by 80stastic

Finally it’s that time of the year. No, not bonfire night that was upon us in 1993 but that cherished but fleeting period that us synchronists look forward to – when the BBC4 TOTP repeats and the present day month match. November 1993 meet November 2022. We can watch these old shows safe in the knowledge that the tunes featured were from almost exactly 29 years ago. Indeed, when the second TOTP was aired on the Friday just gone they synchronised to the very day – 11th November. Perfect! I’m getting ahead of myself though. Let’s trawl through the 4th November show to see what fireworks and bangers await…

We start with the first of two Scottish electronic dance bands featured tonight (what were the chances eh?). I speculated in a previous post about why The Time Frequency felt the need to include the definite article in their name. Reading up on them some more, it seems founding band member Jon Campbell was in an 70s synth band called Thru The Fire and when they broke up, he kept the initials of the name as a template for his next project. Well, that’s what Wikipedia tells me but it seems a bit of a lame reason to me. Anyway, after scoring a Top 20 hit earlier in the year with “The Power Zone EP”, the decision was taken to rerelease their debut single “Real Love” which had missed the charts the previous year. A remix was made of it and it was shoved back out into the market under the title of “Real Love ‘93” – there was very little imagination around in record label offices when it came to naming rereleases it seems. Lacking in imagination they may have been but their business case was sound and the rerelease became the band’s biggest ever hit when it peaked at No 8. To me though, it sounded like the poor relation to “Insanity” by Oceanic.

https://youtu.be/2LFM8cZWvCQ

The performance here with the two dancers dressed in full metal robot outfits brought back memories of a rather cheesy but somehow endearing chart hit from 1985…

https://youtu.be/Xfoxz6aBNsI

Next a song that I would have thought was a much bigger hit than it was. However, its chart peak of No 7 doesn’t tell the whole story. I’m talking about “Hero” by Mariah Carey which was the second single taken from her “Music Box” album. We sold loads of this over Christmas ‘93 when I was working in the Our Price in Altrincham, Cheshire and if you check out the single’s chart run, it backs up my claim. It just wouldn’t go away. Yes, it only had three weeks inside the Top 10 but it had another seven where it ricocheted around the Top 20 between positions 18 and 11. It actually stood solid for three consecutive weeks at No 18 before going back up the charts. It reversed its decline in sales another time during its chart life to move back into the Top 10 having fallen out of it the previous week. These were not normal chart manoeuvres. It eventually fell out of the Top 40 around mid January ‘94. Why was it so durable? It could be that ballad at Christmas time always being a winner theory in action again. Maybe it was to do with the lyrics about self-belief, inner courage and finding the hero within oneself that struck a chord with record buyers.

Its durability would lead to longevity. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001, Mariah re-recorded the track as a medley with a song from her “Glitter” album called “Never Too Far” and released it as a charity single. In 2008, the X Factor finalists covered the song to raise funds for the Help For Heroes and Royal British Legion charities. It would become a sales phenomenon selling 100,000 copies in its first day of release and becoming the best selling single of that year. They performed the track with Mariah in one of the live shows.

Proper rock legends next though their list of UK chart hit singles up to this point belied that status. Not counting their collaboration with Run-D.M.C. on 1986’s “Walk This Way”, “Cryin’” was only the fifth ever Top 40 hit for Aerosmith up to that point in time. It was, however, their third hit on the bounce (all from the “Get A Grip”) album). “Livin’ On The Edge” (like ex-Home Secretary Priti Patel, the band had a habit of dropping their ‘g’s at the end of words) had made No 19 and “Eat The Rich” No 34 earlier in the year. “Cryin’” would be the biggest of all three when it peaked at No 17 over here though it was more successful in the rest of Europe going Top 10 just about everywhere and even topping the charts in Norway.

This was the band in proper power ballad mode but with that bit of Aerosmith cheek thrown in for good measure. Or as Steven Tyler described it:

“It was country – we just Aerosmith’d it.”
“The 20 Songs That Can Represent The Career Of Aerosmith”. Society of Rock. Retrieved May 23, 2022.

I have a distinct memory of a young Zoë Ball, early in her TV career, interviewing Tyler on some music programme about how to be a rock music fan (or something) and her finishing the piece by wandering off camera singing “Cryin’” whilst performing the Chuck Berry duck walk though her version of it made her just look like she was constipated.

Though the TOTP producers have pulled off a coup here by having the band in the studio, it means we don’t get to see the award winning video that promoted the single. Featuring a sixteen years old Alicia Silverstone plus pre fame Stephen Dorff (Backbeat) and Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost), it won three MTV video awards in 1994.

As host Tony Dortie says, 1993 saw loads of solo female artists break through with the likes of Dina Carroll, Gabrielle and Michelle Gayle all having big chart hits. Add to that list Pauline Henry. Late of The Chimes parish but now striking out on her own, her cover of Bad Company’s “Feel Like Making Love” (note the ‘g’ in making Aerosmith and Priti Patel!) was her second and biggest hit when it peaked at No 12. Just about as far removed from The Chimes’ soulful take on U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” as it could be, Pauline really belted out this raucous rock standard. Fair play to her by the way for daring to take on the mighty vocals of Paul Rodgers – if it was a football match, it would certainly go to extra time.

Sadly for Pauline, her single success didn’t translate into album sales and her debut LP staggered to a high of No 45. A second album of more cover versions resulted in two minor hit singles before Pauline decided on a change of career and studied for a Bachelor of Law degree and a masters in Intellectual Law Property.

After dicking about with the Breakers feature for a couple of weeks, the section is now firmly re-established by the TOTP producers with five acts in it this week. We start with a collaboration between Faith No More and Boo–Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (that’s the second time I’ve had to type a rap act’s name in that format this post!). “Another Body Murdered” was a track from the soundtrack to the film Judgement Night, a crime thriller starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jnr and (joy oh joy for us synchronists again!) Stephen Dorff. The soundtrack followed an idea by Cypress Hill manager Happy Walters that each track should pair a rock artist with a rap act. Alongside the Faith No More Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. (third time!) meet up, there was Teenage Fan Club and De La Soul and Living Color and Run-D.M.C. (fourth time!!) to name but two. Critical reaction to the premise has been mixed. Some saw it as laying the groundwork for bands such as Korn and Limp Bizkit to thrive (was that a good thing?) whilst others saw it as jumping on the Anthrax/Public Enemy collaboration “Bring The Noise” bandwagon. I have to say judging by the twenty-five seconds of “Another Body Murdered” we get here, I’m unlikely to search out the soundtrack album though that meeting of Teenage Fan Club / De La Soul does sound interesting.

Just to prove Tony Dortie’s point about UK female solo artists in 1993, here’s another one and like Pauline Henry before her, she had a solid CV behind her already. Juliet Roberts first came to chart prominence ten years prior with Funk Masters’ Top 10 hit “Its Over” before she became the vocalist for Smooth jazzers Working Week. Critical acclaim but little commercial success led her to move on finding work as a session singer for the likes of Cathy Dennis and rather improbably Breathe before taking the plunge on her own. Having breached the Top 30 with her hit “Caught In The Middle” earlier in the year, she was back with another tilt at it with “Free Love”. It would attain a similar chart peak of No 25.

Sadly for Juliet, also like Pauline Henry, a collection of middling hit singles didn’t convert into a hit album and her debut effort “Natural Thing” could only manage a high of No 65. Her last chart entry came as vocalist on David Morales’s “Needin U II” in 2001, a title that makes Aerosmith and Priti Patel look like linguistic experts.

By late 1993, Soul II Soul had reached the point in their career where diminishing returns were starting to set in. “Club Classics Vol. One” and the track “Back To Life” especially had made the band global superstars but four and a half years on their commercial fortunes, though by no means flatlining, were not what they were as the 80s ended and the 90s began. The remedy? A Best Of album of course and so it was that “Volume IV The Classic Singles 88-93” was put together and released for the Christmas market. I actually liked the fact that they continued with the ‘Volume’ theme even though this wasn’t a studio album and included tracks that had already been part of the previous volumes. Except this one. “Wish” was a brand new track recorded to promote the collection as was the established trend (see also contemporary chart peer “Please Forgive Me” by Bryan Adams). The album sold well enough going to No 10 in the charts but subsequent releases failed to reverse the sales drift.

As for “Wish” itself, I’m no Soul II Soul expert but it seemed to me to promise a lot but deliver little or as a rather posh sounding woman I heard on Radio 4 recently delightfully put it whilst describing Liz Truss, it was ‘all fart and no shit’.

Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston on the same show?! One year on from the sales phenomenon that was her cover of “I Will Always Love You” comes the final single released by her from The Bodyguard soundtrack. “Queen Of The Night” was the fifth track taken from it recorded by Whitney (though seventh including other artists) and it stood alone from the other four in its sound. With three of those four being big ballads and the other a cover of Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman”, there was space for something different and “Queen Of The Night” was. Or was it? A few critics at the time cited its similarities to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind” and Janet Jackson’s “Black Cat” with its hard rock guitars and Whitney’s growly vocals though personally I think it just about stands up on its own legs.

The video is pretty much the performance of the song in the actual film – the scene where Whitney’s character has to be rescued by Kevin Costner when the security arrangements at her gig are shown to be lacking and a riot breaks out. The Bodyguard film generally gets slated as being substandard with Costner especially being highlighted for a wooden performance but I always quite liked it and thought Whitney gives a decent and convincing turn but then if she couldn’t play a pop star diva then what character could she play?

“Queen Of The Night” peaked at No 14. We wouldn’t see Whitney in the charts again for two years when she would return with songs from another soundtrack for a film in which she starred, Waiting To Exhale.

The final Breaker comes from Culture Beat who are straight into the Top 10 with “Got To Get It”. I’ve shared this anecdote before but I’m going to use it again – well, if Culture Beat can recycle their No 1 single “Mr Vain” and just blatantly release it as the official follow up as if it’s a brand new song then I’m certainly allowed to use a story twice! I was in the last days of working at the Our Price in Stockport when this single came out. On the day of release, a young girl came up to the counter and asked for the single by Culture Beat. As “Mr Vain” had still been selling and had only just dropped out of the Top 40 the other week, I thought I’d better check which one she meant and so asked her “Got To Get It?”. Her reply? “I just really like it”. Lovely stuff.

It’s time for the second of those two Scottish electronic bands now as The Shamen are in the studio with “The SOS EP (Comin’ On)”. This was the sixth single released from their “Boss Drum” album that had been out for nearly fourteen months by this point. Those singles attained the following chart peaks:

6 – 1 – 4 – 5 – 18 – 14

Not too shabby you’d have to say. This was peak era Shamen. They were never as big again with only four more Top 40 hits throughout the entire decade none of which got higher than No 15. I have to say I don’t remember “Comin’ On” (they must have attended that Aerosmith songwriting class) but it sounds better than I was expecting. Sort of starts out a bit like The Prodigy and then spins into an infectious dance anthem but with a pop song structure. By the way, what had happened to Colin Angus’s hair. Were those long tresses real or extensions?

A conversation between Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B and Wet Wet Wet’s Marti Pellow* sometime in early Autumn 1993:

*with massive apologies to anyone reading this who is Scottish

JB: Marty my man! How’s it hanging?

MP: Jazzie! Och, aye, no bad ye ken. How urr ye?

JB: You know me man. A happy face, a thumpin’ bass, for a lovin’ race!

MP: Aye.

JB: Marti man. You look down. What gives fella?

MP: We hae nae got a record oot for Yule. Oor label ur nipping us tae sort it oot.

JB: No worries man. Put a Best Of album out.

MP: Crakin’ yin! Och hing oan, whit aboot a single tae promote it?

JB: Just knock a new track out one afternoon. That’s what we did. Any old shite will do.

MP: Aye Jimmy!

It could have happened like that! Anyway, the Wets Best Of was called “End Of Part One: Their Greatest Hits” and was a big seller over Christmas ‘93 originally peaking at No 4. The following year, the band did a Bryan Adams and were at No 1 for fifteen weeks with “Love Is All Around”. To cash in, their label Mercury added it to the album and rereleased it at which point it returned to the charts straight to No 1. As for that new track, “Shed A Tear” was duly shoved out to promote it. I have zero recall of it but it sounds like it possibly was recorded in an afternoon with band’s collective thumbs up their bums and minds in neutral. It peaked at No 22.

Watching the performance here, the front three Wets (including Marti) all have ponytails whilst the keyboard player looks like he’s trying to grow his hair to catch up but his naturally curly locks are hampering his endeavour. Drummer Tommy Cunningham looked the same as he ever did and continues to do so to this day. Maybe it’s a drummer thing – Blur’s Dave Rowntree has similarly always maintained the same look.

Meatloaf still bestrides the charts like a colossus with the epic rock ballad “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”. As with my Culture Beat anecdote, I’ve told this story before but the big guy’s at No 1 for weeks yet so I’m having to resort to recycling. My mate Robin has a friend who is a musician who has toured with the likes of Westlife. His own band was booked to play at the wedding of one John Hartson, the ex-professional footballer and now pundit. His best man was one of my footballing heroes, ex-Chelsea striker Kerry Dixon. Apparently the drinks flowed and everybody over indulged…including the groom. So pissed was Hartson that when Robin’s friend’s band finished their set, Hartson asked them to play one more song, especially for his new wife. The song Hartson chose to dedicate to her was Meatloaf’s “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” the lyrics of which include:

I want you, I need you, there ain’t no way I’m ever gonna love you

Now don’t be sad, ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Jim Steinman
Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad lyrics © Carlin America Inc, Warner Chappell Music, Inc

Oh…my…God.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Time Frequency	Real Love ’93	Never happening
2	Mariah Carey	Hero	Nah
3	Aerosmith	Cryin’	Nope
4	Pauline Henry	Feel Like Making Love	I did not
5	Faith No More / Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.	Another Body Murdered	No
6	Juliet Roberts	Free Love	Negative
7	Soul II Soul	Wish	Definitely not
8	Whitney Houston	Queen Of The Night	It’s a no
9	Culture Beat	Got To Get It	I didn’t unlike that young girl I served
10	The Shamen	The SOS EP (Comin’ On)	Like it, didn’t buy it
11	Wert Wet Wet	Shed A Tear	No. not a patch on their earlier work
12	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001dzyf/top-of-the-pops-04111993

TOTP 16 SEP 1993

Posted on October 21, 2022 by 80stastic

There’s some massive tunes and stellar names on this particular TOTP starting with one of the biggest rock songs of all time. Who doesn’t know “Ace Of Spades” by Motörhead? Seriously though, who doesn’t?

Enter Motörhead fan, stage left…

MF: Alright pal. What other Motörhead songs do you know?

Me: Erm…well…there’s that one about…you know…um…ahh…Oh God! I don’t know any others!

Yes, turns out I’m not really an aficionado on Motörhead at all though I do like “Ace Of Spades” but then who doesn’t (don’t start all that again!). What I do know however is that during their early 1980s heyday I read a series of articles about the band in the Daily Mirror (our family’s choice of paper) where I learned of the classic line up of Lemmy, Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor and ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke. I also read of their tales of debauchery involving what they called ‘dodgy boilers’ who even the wet behind the ears 12 year old me knew referred to groupies who were prepared to get horizontal to meet their idols.

Sadly, all three of the classic line up have now shuffled off this mortal coil with the band officially disbanding following Lemmy’s death in 2015. Still, all us 80s kids will always have this…

The iconic tunes continue with the Pet Shop Boys treatment of The Village People classic “Go West”. This cover version had been first performed by the duo at an AIDS charity gig at the Haçienda nightclub in Manchester organised by Derek Jarman. Originally scheduled for a non-album release in 1992, it was eventually included in the set list for their fifth studio album “Very”.

I recall there being a real buzz about this single – I have a distinct memory of Simon Bates (who must have been coming to the end of his time at Radio 1) asking on air when it was going to be released. Certainly it provided a spike in sales of “Very” when it entered the chart at No 2. Somehow it never made it to that coveted top spot though.

Watching the video back now, it seems madly prophetic with Neil and Chris striding across Red Square in blue and yellow costumes which offer up images of the war in Ukraine perpetrated by Russia. This is hammered home by the intro which seems strangely redolent of the State Anthem of the Soviet Union. Obviously, nobody would have been considering any of that back in 1993 when we would probably have been marvelling at the CGI of the promo by Howard Greenhalgh which was nominated for a Grammy.

I saw the Pet Shop Boys live about six months ago with a friend and this track was a stand out inducing much hugging, swaying and singing along. Chris and Neil would never have as big a hit single again.

Another huge song now as we see the TOTP debut of Radiohead. So much has been written about “Creep” let alone the band themselves so I don’t think I can add anything much to that particular canon of work. However, these are my personal thoughts and memories for what they are worth.

I’d heard of Radiohead due to their minor hit single “Anyone Can Play Guitar” from earlier in the year but hadn’t actually heard Radiohead if you see what I mean. The initial release of “Creep” from 1992 when it failed to chart hadn’t registered on my musical radar. I’d kept meaning to give their debut album “Pablo Honey” a play on the shop stereo but never got round to it. Suddenly though, there was a huge buzz around “Creep” again. Why? It had been a big hit in Israel and gained a lot of airplay on alternative rock radio stations in the US which, in a Spinal Tap “Sex Farm” has gone Top 10 in Japan style, convinced EMI to rerelease it against the band’s wishes. Their decision was rewarded with a No 7 smash hit single.

Knowing what we do now about what the band went onto do, watching this performance back seems a little surreal. Compared to even their next album “The Bends”, “Creep” has a rather unsophisticated albeit massive sound to it. Or maybe it’s just being confronted by the shock of Thom Yorke’s peroxide blonde hair that grates. That’s not to say “Creep” isn’t a good (or even great) song just that its legacy wouldn’t be being chief representative of their catalogue. Indeed, for a while it became one of those songs that becomes an albatross around an artist’s neck. The band nearly imploded from the record company expectations of writing a similar follow up and refused to play it live for years.

For all that though, you can’t underestimate the impact of the performance here on TOTP – it blew most other songs in the chart away. That ‘ch-chunk’ guitar sound from Jonny Greenwood’s guitar was off the scale whilst Yorke’s tortured vocals could not be ignored. This was the performance Nirvana should have given on the show for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” instead of that comedy turn they served up. Certainly only Motörhead could compete on this particular show. “Creep” then – by no means Radiohead’s best song but it was still much more than just a slacker anthem.

That run of three choice tracks on the spin comes to an end then (in my humble opinion) with yet some more slick but soulless US R’n’B courtesy of Jade. A third consecutive hit for the Chicago trio, “One Woman” was a big ballad unlike their previous two, hip-hop influenced singles “Don’t Walk Away” and “I Wanna Love You” but although it’s a very accomplished sound I’m sure, it did little for me. And hadn’t we seen the choreography with a chair routine before from Janet Jackson? Or was it Madonna? Or Liza Minnelli in Cabaret? “One Woman” peaked at No 22 both here and in the US.

Another live by satellite performance now. This time it’s from Minneapolis and is by Lenny Kravitz. Is this the third time he’s been on the show doing “Heaven Help”? It feels like it and means I have very little left to say about this one…

…other than check out the hair on his backing band. The guitarist’s Afro is immense but then you see his drummer’s. Wow! If Roy Wood and the drummer from Wizzard had a love child…

Just the three Breakers this week starting with ex–Massive Attack singer Shara Nelson and “One Goodbye In Ten”. The follow up to Top 20 hit “Down That Road”, quite what we were meant to make of it after hearing just sixteen seconds of it here (I timed it) I have no idea. Sixteen seconds! What was the point?! Seriously though Stanley Appel, sixteen seconds?! Having listened to the full song on YouTube, it seems to me to be a pleasant enough ditty with a Motown-esque feel to it and some nicely inserted strings but just on the wrong side of lightweight. It would peak at No 21, two places lower than her debut hit.

What the Roxette is going on here? Marie and Per were back in the charts with “It Must Have Been Love” again? Host Mark Franklin tells us it’s because of the film it was taken from Pretty Woman having its terrestrial TV premiere recently and therefore record company EMI had rereleased it to cash in on its second wave of popularity. Yes kids, back in the day before Spotify and streaming platforms had been invented allowing continuous access to just about everything song wise, events like this would happen regularly. Off the top of my head, Berlin went back into the charts with “Take My Breath Away” four years after it was a hit initially thanks to the TV showing of Top Gun and Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes experienced a similar thing with “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life” when Dirty Dancing made it to our TV screens four years after the cinema release of the film.

I wonder what Marie and Per felt about the rerelease? It’s not as if they hadn’t recorded any other material since “It Must Have Been Love” was originally a hit in 1990. In fact, they were very consistent visitors to our charts so would they have been pleased to see that by making No 10 in 1993, it became their third biggest hit over here of the eight singles they had released in the intervening years? Maybe they just thought about the royalties cheques.

1993 saw the first new material from Kate Bush of the decade. Her last studio album had been 1989’s “The Sensual World” and apart from her version of “Rocket Man” for the Elton John /Bernie Taupin tribute album “Two Rooms”, we hadn’t heard from her since. “Rubberband Girl” was the lead single from her album “The Red Shoes” and like three of her last five singles released, would improbably peak at No 12 in the charts. Was that a good return for such a big name? I dunno. Maybe Kate was always more of an album artist and her fan base would be waiting for “The Red Shoes” itself to come out? I know my wife did.

As for the song, Kate herself dismisses it rather as:

Well, it’s a fun track […] It’s just a silly pop song really […]
Mojo magazine (UK) 2011

Other online reviews I have read say the song’s production values date it and that it feels like an outlier on the rest of the album. I don’t know about any of that but I found it engaging enough. I assume the lyrics reflect somebody bouncing back from a setback? Kate Bush does Chumbawumba? Or is it more literal than that and Kate is talking about a dancer who just wants to be supple? The album cover does depict a drawing of red ballet shoes and Kate did release a short film in conjunction with the album called The Line, The Cross And The Curve in which she played a dancer who puts on a pair of magical ballet shoes. Whatever. I thought it was OK but nowhere near the standard of some of her early career classics.

No! No! No! Not Chaka Demus And Pliers again! “Tease Me” has only just gone out of the charts and they’re immediately back in with the follow up “She Don’t Let Nobody”. I have to say I don’t recall this one despite its No 4 chart peak. “Tease Me” yeah of course and their chart topper cover of “Twist And Shout” obviously but this one? It escaped the memory bank somehow.

I wasn’t expecting much based on “Tease Me” which seemed to be full of either Chaka Demus or Pliers (I’ve no idea which) shouting “Baby Girl” or “Number One In The World” repeatedly. Having listened to it though, it could have been worse. It’s almost a proper song which I guess is not surprising seeing as it was written by soul legend Curtis Mayfield. Obviously, it’s completely ruined by the inclusion of all the rapping/toasting but you know, the template was there.

If a week is a long time in politics (and that has been proven beyond any doubt by recent events in Westminster), it is also true that a year can be an eternity in pop music. Multiply that by five and it feels like time has bent and warped and no longer exists by any temporal measures. Five years though was the real time gap between Belinda Carlisle hitting No 1 with “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” and her 1993 incarnation. By this point in her career, the hits were much smaller in the UK and non-existent in America. Her last album “Live Your Life Be Free” hadn’t yielded any Top 10 singles and neither would this, her next album, “Real” though lead single “Big Scary Animal” came close when it peaked at No 12.

I was working at the Our Price store in Stockport by now having transferred from Rochdale and the staff there were quite unforgiving of artists deemed to not be credible. Belinda came into that category and there was much mocking of the title of her latest single which I didn’t quite understand. What I did understand was that this wasn’t much of a departure from her usual fare. Pleasant song with a big hooky chorus? You betcha. Still, if it ain’t broke and all that…

The album sneaked into the Top 10 at No 9 but just a year earlier, her first Greatest Hits collection had gone to No 1 suggesting that there was an appetite for her earlier work but maybe not her new stuff. I think maybe Madonna went through a similar thing with “The Immaculate Collection” release. In 1996 though, she bucked that trend when her album “A Woman & A Man” provided her with two Top 10 UK singles.

Oh, yes. I had to watch this performance very closely to realise that the blonde haired guitarist on the left wasn’t Nick Beggs of Kajagoogoo who toured with Belinda around this time and worked with her on the aforementioned “A Woman & A Man” record.

Still at No 1 are Culture Beat with “Mr.Vain” although this will be the last of four weeks at the top. The single would end up being the 10th biggest seller of 1993 in the UK. The rest of that Top 10? Oh god it was awful. Haddaway, Shaggy, 2 Unlimited, Ace Of Base…and horror upon horror another single with the prefix ‘Mr.’…”Mr.Blobby”. “Mr…f*****g…Blobby”. I give up.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Motörhead	Ace Of Spades	I must have it on something surely?!
2	Pet Shop Boys	Go West	No but I have it on there Pop Art collection
3	Radiohead	Creep	No but I had it on one off those Best Album Ever…indie compilations
4	Jade	Oner Woman	Nah
5	Lenny Kravitz	Heaven Help	I did not
6	Shara Nelson	One Goodbye In Ten	Nope
7	Roxette	It Must Have Been Love	No
8	Kate Bush	Rubberband Girl	No but my wife had the Red Shoes album
9	Chaka Demus And Pliers	She Don’t Let Nobody	Of course not
10	Belinda Carlisle	Big Scary Animal	Negative
11	Culture Beat	Mr. Vain	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001d09z/top-of-the-pops-16091993

TOTP 09 SEP 1993

Posted on October 18, 2022 by 80stastic

We’re well into September 1993 here at TOTP Rewind and the Top 40 continues to be completely batshit in its make up. Look at the running order for this TOTP. We’ve got Eurodance, grunge, a singer-songwriter, some Scottish rock/pop, perhaps the ultimate in bonkers artists from Iceland and f*****g Motörhead! Like I said, batshit!

We start with someone who may or may not be full on batshit but whom I have certainly found to be a curious figure at the very least. In 1993, Moby was yet to be catapulted into the celebrity stratosphere due to the ubiquity of his “Play” album but he was still a pioneering name in dance music circles and had already brought his take on it to the mainstream via 1991 Top 10 hit “Go”. A second entry into the charts had been a minor affair when “I Feel It / Thousand” scraped in at No 38. However, he would go much higher with “Move – The EP” from which this track “Move (You Make Me Feel So Good)” came.

Like Black Box and Marky Mark And The Funky Bunch before it, the track sampled “Love Sensation” by Loleatta Holloway but that isn’t what is keeping my attention in this performance. No, it’s the inverting of roles that we normally see from a dance act on TOTP. How many times have we witnessed an anonymous bloke at the back of the stage twiddling with some keyboards with a female vocalist belting out the (usually limited amount of) vocals upfront whilst trying to live thugs up with some dance moves? Well, it’s loads of times I can tell you but that template wasn’t for Moby. No, his female singer stands rigidly still with her arms behind her back for the entire performance. Meanwhile, it’s Moby who hogs the spotlight, leaping about and energetically pounding his synth drums. At one point he crouches Gollum- like on his keyboards before standing fully erect and then jumping down onto the stage! Like I said about him earlier, a bit odd.

“The Move EP” peaked at No 21.

There have been some famous princes over the years. How about Prince Charming for a start? Then there’s our new King who was Prince Charles for years (don’t mention Andrew – I said don’t mention…never mind). More recently there’s the villainous Prince Hans from Frozen and…erm…yes, Prince of course (as in the genius recording artist RIP). The best rapping Prince though? This guy must be in with a shout. I refer to The Fresh Prince (of Bel-Air), one half of the rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince.

The last time these two (Will Smith and Jeff Townes obviously) were in our charts was two years prior when “Summertime” went Top 10. Now they were back with the biggest hit of their career with *SPOILER* future No 1 “Boom! Shake The Room”. Seriously, who couldn’t like this hook laden platter of rap, hip-hop and a massive shout-a-long chorus? A perfect antidote to all that Eurodance nonsense – was it the record that knocked “Mr. Vain” of the top of the charts? I certainly hope so.

This was a watershed moment for Will Smith’s recording career as it just about brought the curtain down on DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince as a recording artist with future releases coming under his own name. I’m pretty sure that Townes continued to work with Smith on his solo artist output though. It would prove to be a commercially successful decision with Smith racking up eight Top 5 singles including the No 1 “Men In Black“. The Prince is dead, long live…erm…Will Smith?

Next to that bonkers artist from Iceland I mentioned earlier. I’m not a big Björk fan on account of her voice. I may have even gone as far as to state on occasion that she just can’t sing. I was wrong about that on reflection – she can sing it’s just that I don’t like it. Her performance here on “Venus As A Boy” being a case in point. The track itself I don’t mind. It’s got a tinkling charm to it that draws you in somehow but then Björk starts singing and it all becomes about her and that voice. Maybe I’m missing the point.

The performance here isn’t quite as out there as I would have expected with Björk giving a fairly orthodox delivery (I can’t believe she was out-bonkered by Moby!) albeit with an outfit that looked highly flammable. Here’s host Tony Dortie with an insight:

#totp there really was a big Health and safety meeting on whether Bjork cld perform with no shoes…
— Tony Dortie (@TonyDortie) October 14, 2022

But…but…you couldn’t see her feet under that outfit so what was the point?! What we could see though was her clearly Space 1999 influenced eyebrows:

Oh and what were the model ships on plinths all about? Her backing band look like they are expecting something to kick off with her at any point but then she could be volatile…

Finally a live by satellite performance that is interesting! First there’s a little to camera intro from the band and then the execution of the song is simple yet somehow bewitching. I talk, of course, of James. You can always rely on the poetic Tim Booth to provide some high brow drama.

After finally becoming a bona fide chart act with the re-release of “Sit Down” going to No 2 in 1991, the band consolidated on their success with the well received “Seven” album and its attendant four singles. Not people to rest on their laurels, they were back in 1993 with fifth studio album “Laid” of which “Sometimes (Lester Piggott)” was the lead single. I think I may have been guilty at the time of thinking that their output was starting to stick to a formula and lumped “Sometimes” in with that but it’s actually a superbly crafted song with striking imagery in its lyrics of a child facing a monsoon wanting to be hit by lightning. It deserved a higher peak than its ultimate No 18 resting place.

I really like the staging of the performance here with the band proving that all they needed was an empty space to work in to come up with something interesting. The static five band members behind Booth strumming their guitars in unison creates an hypnotic effect although the guy on the end with the long hair (sorry, not up on all the members of James) who can’t resist swaying his head along to the beat is distracting. It’s sort of like a gender-reversed Robert Palmer backing band for “Addicted To Love” but without the pouting. Meanwhile, Tim Booth dances with a Spanish looking lady dressed entirely in black. I would have expected nothing less. Almost perfect.

Oh and that Lester Piggott suffix in the song title? Here’s Tim courtesy of @TOTPFacts:

The full title of "Sometimes" is "Sometimes (Lester Piggott)" – Tim Booth explained the bit in parentheses by saying "it has a racing beat". It was produced by Brian Eno, who also provided additional vocals. #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 14, 2022

Back in the studio we find Stone Temple Pilots performing their single “Plush”. I know I made the comparison in a previous post but this is just “Alive” by Pearl Jam isn’t it? Not that that’s a bad thing (I like “Alive”) but the similarities are quite stark.

The guitarist Dean DeLeo looked a bit like a young John Bishop on first glance but having sought out more images of him online, he actually looks like someone I used to work with at the Civil Service. And yes, I realise that comment won’t mean anything to the vast majority of you reading this but he does so there. “Plush” peaked at No 23 in the UK.

The Breakers are next starting with Guru featuring N’Dea Davenport. Now I find all this very confusing. Why? Well, while I don’t remember this single “Trust Me”, I do recall the album that it came from which was “Guru’s Jazzmatazz Vol 1 (An Experimental Fusion Of Hip-Hop And Jazz)”. So why my confusion? Wikipedia tells me that the album only got to No 58 in the UK charts and yet I remember selling loads of it in the Our Price store in Altrincham where I was working at the time. How can this be? I refuse to believe that a market town in Trafford, Greater Manchester with a population of 52,419 was/is the centre of the hip-hop/ jazz fusion world!

N’Dea Davenport was of course the on-off singer with acid jazzers the Brand New Heavies with whom Guru (real name Keith Elam) collaborated on their second album “Heavy Rhyme Experience Vol 1”. Do you think Keith nicked not only the band’s singer but also the idea for his album title off them?

In my head, Texas didn’t have any chart success between their debut single “I Don’t Want A Lover” in 1989 and their Chris Evans championed resurrection in 1997 with “Say What You Want” but that isn’t the case. I was aware that they released two whole albums in the intervening years but I erroneously thought that neither yielded any Top 40 hits. “Mother’s Heaven” supplied No 32 hit “Alone With You” in 1992 and now here was “So Called Friend” from third album “Rick’s Road” which made it to No 30*

*They also had a non-album single, a cover of Al Green’s “Tired Of Being Alone” go to No 19 in 1992.

https://youtu.be/qHcwrFj3xGU

“So Called Friend” is pleasant enough without being anywhere near approaching exceptional although it was considered special enough to be the theme tune to US sitcom Ellen from series three onwards.

Go to 5:40

WHO??!!! Zhané (pronounced Jah-Nay which was actually the title of their debut album) were a US dance duo who scored a massive hit over there with “Hey Mr. DJ” which got to No 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was one of those tracks that never really crossed over here where it peaked at No 26. I’m not sure why that would be when American RnB acts like Jade and SWV were having Top 10 hits over here in this year but there you go. They would have two other minor UK chart hits in the 90s before disbanding in 1999. I, obviously, don’t remember it.

YES! It’s Motörhead which means I get to tell my Lemmy story! Well, it’s not actually mine but rather my friend Robin’s who has given me clearance to use it here. This is it. A few years back whilst living in London, Robin had some friends from his student days (including my wife but not me) stay over at his gaff in Marylebone. It turned out to be a heavy night and unfortunately one of those staying was sick in the bed of one of his flat mates who was away at the time. Feeling guilty and knowing his flat mate was returning that day, the following morning he took the sick-covered duvet to the local dry cleaners. On the way there, he was approached by a man asking the way to a boozer (The Angel In The Fields on Marylebone High Street for all you London pub enthusiasts out there). That man was Lemmy. Despite the weird experience of meeting a rock legend unexpectedly whilst carrying a bag containing a sick-splattered duvet, Robin managed to keep his wits about him and say to Lemmy that he’d been to a Motörhead gig the other week and told him how great they’d been. Lemmy’s reply? “Keep The Faith”. Now that’s definitely perfect.

Why was “Ace Of Spades” back in the charts? I think it was to promote a Best Of album released by Castle Communications hence the single actually being called “Ace Of Spades – The CCN Remix 1993”.

I have posited a theory in past posts that there were clues hiding in plain sight that Siobahn Fahey was bound to leave Bananarama because she always had a slightly different outfit to Sarah and Keren when appearing on TOTP. While the other two would match sartorially, Siobahn would shake things up a bit by customising her version of the chosen ensemble. Talking of ‘the other two’ (a reference for the New Order super fans there), here are Barney, Hooky and…erm…the other two with their “World (The Price Of Love)” single.

That ‘other two’ reference isn’t the only connection to the Nanas though as I think that clothes theory is visible again. Look at Hooky with his mane of hair, his leather trousers and his ‘rock god’ posturing and compare him to the rest of them – of course he would end up leaving the band! “World (The Price Of Love)” peaked at No 13.

1993 saw the return of Beverley Craven but nobody really noticed. I mean, judging by the chart performance of this single “Love Scenes” that seems to be true as it struggled to a peak of No 34. After the dizzy heights reached by “Promise Me” two years prior, this surely wasn’t what her record label Epic were hoping for from the lead single of a new album (also called “Love Scenes”).

But then watch Beverley’s performance here and my claim that nobody noticed her return is blown out of the water. What was going on here?! Who decided to plonk her in a chair with a microphone centre stage wearing a dress that gives a new definition to the word ‘revealing’?! My God! Sharon Stone would have been embarrassed! No wonder Beverley looks like she’s on the edge of a cliff knowing any moment a gust of wind could blow her over (or indeed up her dress)! Where was her trusty piano that she always performed with?

As for the song itself, it’s a curious thing both in its sound and as a choice of single. It kind of reminds me of the theme tune to 70s action-comedy series The Persuaders!. Beverley would never return to the UK Top 40 after this single and retired from the music industry to bring up her three daughters. She returned to the recording studio in 1999 for the largely ignored “Mixed Emotions” album before embarking on another ten year hiatus. After battling cancer she has both recorded and toured with Julia Fordham and Judie Tzuke under the Woman To Woman banner and are currently playing live at a venue near you this month with special guest Rumer.

Culture Beat are still going strong at the top of the charts with “Mr. Vain”. There are a lot of links between them and Snap! Both made Eurodance music, both had UK No 1 singles, both had a rapper in their ranks who did their US military service in Germany (Jay Supreme and Turbo B) and both had a revolving door policy for female vocalists. And they were both crap of course.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Moby	Move (You Make Me Feel So Good)	No
2	DJ Jazzy Jeff And The Fresh Prince	Boom! Shake The Room	Liked it, didn’t buy it
3	Björk	Venus As A Boy	I did not
4	James	Sometimes (Lester Pigott)	No but I have it on their Best Of album
5	Stone Temple Pilots	Plush	Nah
6	Guru featuring N’Dea Davenport	Trust Me	Negative
7	Texas	So Called Friend	Nope
8	Zhané	Hey Mr. DJ	Not likely
9	Motörhead	Ace Of Spades	I must have it on something surely?
10	New Order	World (The Price Of Love)	No
11	Beverley Craven	Love Scenes	Didn’t happen
12	Culture Beat	Mr. Vain	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001d09x/top-of-the-pops-09091993

TOTP 02 SEP 1993

Posted on October 14, 2022 by 80stastic

I commented in a recent post about the machinations that were happening at Radio 1 in the Autumn of 1993. Incoming new controller Matthew Bannister was on a mission to revitalise the station’s image that hadn’t been ‘hip for the kids’ for quite some time. The day after this TOTP was broadcast, there was another change – not as headline making as Dave Lee Travis’ recent on air rant / resignation but fairly big news all the same. Simon Mayo’s tenure at the helm of the station’s most high profile slot The Breakfast Show came to an end after five years. He’d been in place whilst I was a student, through getting married and now into full adulthood but to be honest, I wasn’t that arsed about his departure. He always came across as a bit smug to me and was single handedly responsible for making chart hits out of some awful records like “Kinky Boots” and “Donald Where’s Yer Troosers?”. He would move to the mid morning slot before leaving Radio 1 altogether in 2001. After spells at Radio 5 Live and Radio 2, he currently resides at Greatest Hits Radio I believe. He will be one of the faces that return to TOTP when the BBC4 repeats reach 1994 and the ‘year zero’ revamp changes are reversed.

Talking of faces…We start the show with 2 Unlimited and their latest single “Faces”. I’m sorry but this was just milking the formula dry. I’ve read some reviews from the time that suggest that this was a deviation from their usual blueprint with some changes of tempo evident but it sounds exactly the same as their previous single and the one before that to me. There is a bit right at the start where Anita sings the word ‘faces’ and it sounds like “Spaceman” by Babylon Zoo but then it straight into those uncultured synth riffs and some nonsense lyrics about there being different faces everywhere. Banal and pointless. This was just terrible. Somehow it still made the Top 10 just like five of their previous six hits had done.

A full outing for a Breaker from last week now as we get “Disco Inferno” by Tina Turner. Taken from the soundtrack to her biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It, the video features clips from the film alongside Tina performing the track herself. I quite enjoyed the film but apparently both Ike Turner and Tina weren’t keen claiming that there were many inaccuracies in it.

Given her legendary status, I was quite surprised that she has only released nine solo albums and of those, the first four did absolutely nothing commercially. Within her renaissance ‘rock’ era, she made five albums in fifteen years which isn’t too shabby I guess but of those, surely only “Private Dancer” and “Foreign Affair” are truly seen as super successful? Her eight times platinum in the UK Greatest Hits “Simply The Best” should maybe be included in there as well? Or maybe you can’t judge an artist’s reputation purely on sales? Talking of which, “Disco Inferno” peaked at No 12.

The chart hits in the early to mid 90s for Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine were as consistent in their regularity as they were in the eccentricity of their titles. After “Sheriff Fatman”, “Do Re Me So Far So Good” and “After The Watershed (Early Learning The Hard Way)” comes “Lean On Me I Won’t Fall Over” with a picture of a weeble on its cover.

This was their seventh consecutive Top 30 hit and the lead single from their fourth album “Post Historic Monsters”. The budget for the set for their performance here must have been vastly reduced from their last visit to the TOTP studio when they had a whole campfire with real flames laid on for them. This time there’s just Jim Bob and Fruitbat and a ton of dry ice and is it me or is the former reading the lyrics from a stage monitor? His eyes are looking down for the majority of the performance as if he hasn’t learned the words yet. Jim Bob’s hair though is truly a thing of wonder. Don’t think I’ve seen anything like it since…? The bloke from King Kurt who got tarred and feathered?

“Lean On Me I Won’t Fall Over” peaked at No 16.

https://youtu.be/G4TJP0Vmv0E

Despite this No 17 hit, the time of Kenny Thomas the pop star was nearing its end. He would have only two further Top 40 entries (neither of which got any higher than No 27) so I’m guessing this could have been Kenny’s final TOTP appearance. If so, he went out on a tune called “Trippin’ On Your Love” which was nothing to do with the almost identically titled Bananarama early 90s flop but was actually a cover version of a song originally recorded by The Staple Singers. Kenny seemed to have a talent for recycling obscure songs that punters possibly didn’t realise weren’t Thomas originals. “Outstanding” was a Gap Band track, “Best Of You” was originally recorded by Booker T. Jones and “Tender Love” was a No 23 hit in 1986 for the Force MDs.

All of the above helped to make him an unlikely chart star. He looked like a telecom engineer (which indeed he had been prior to becoming a singer) and his sartorial choices weren’t always the best but the guy could sing as he displays in this performance. Farewell then Kenny. I couldn’t stand you at the time but on reflection, you had some pipes and seem like a decent guy.

I can’t find a clip of this live by satellite performance by Terence Trent D’Arby of “She Kissed Me” but if you squint a bit this could be Lenny Kravitz – both visually and sonically. Maybe it’s the rare sight of TTD playing a guitar or the driving rock riffs but seriously…this is almost a doppelgänger. Lenny Trent D’Arby? Or Terence Kravitz? The former is better phonically I think. Talking of names, if you look up his back catalogue on Spotify, it’s all listed under the name Sananda Maitreya which is the name the former Terence has gone by since 2001.

This week’s Breakers now starting with New Order and “World (Price Of Love)”. This was the third single taken from the band’s “Republic” album and caused quite the rift on Twitter as to its merits. No starker a voice was the band’s ex-member Peter Hook who had this to say (courtesy of @TOTPFacts):

Peter Hook: "I fucking hated "World (The Price Of Love)' with a passion. I hated the name, I hated the song, I hated the backing vocals, (I hated the brackets)." #TOTP
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) October 14, 2022

Wow! Apparently he had very little input to the recording of the track so maybe that explains his stance. The opinions of other contributors to the debate ranged from total agreement with Hooky to saying it was better than previous single “Ruined In A Day” but not as good as “Regret” to completely loving it. I think I’m with option two. The video hardly features the band but those fleeting glimpses would be the last we round see of them in a video for twelve years.

“World (The Price Of Love)” peaked at No 13.

In a musical landscape dominated by Eurodance anthems comes a recording artist with an album to blow all of that out of the water. Mary J. Blige’s 1992 debut “What’s The 411?” was widely recognised as bringing the combination of hip-hop and soul into the mainstream and conferring on her the unofficial title of ‘Queen Of Hip Hop Soul’. “Real Love” was the second single from the album and was also on its second time of release having peaked at No 68 in the UK in 1992. This 1993 remix would give her a genuine Top 40 success when it made it to No 26. I have to say though that, despite all those plaudits, it wasn’t really my bag.

A band next that were much bigger in America than over here which may explain my lack of knowledge of them. Stone Temple Pilots were very much seen as part of the grunge movement when they released their debut album “Core” but grew well beyond it during a career lasting well over thirty years barring a five year hiatus in the middle of it. I do remember the cover of “Core” from working at Our Price but couldn’t tell you what it sounded like. “Plush” was the second single from it and it was a huge hit on the US Rock charts though it only made No 23 over here and would prove to be their only UK Top 40 hit. Listening back to it now, it could be Pearl Jam so I can certainly understand why they were categorised as part of the movement of which Pearl Jam were one of its leading protagonists.

Lead singer Scott Weiland died in 2015 after years of well documented drug addiction problems. Tributes to him came in from the likes of Slash of Guns N’ Roses, Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell.

Apparently this track never got more than these few seconds of exposure on TOTP which seems extraordinary given how ubiquitous it was at the time but then it did only reached No 14 which itself almost defies explanation. “Wild Wood” was the title track of Paul Weller’s second solo album and it seemed to me at the time was an undeniable confirmation that he had re-established his credentials as the fine songwriter he had always been. I say always but the last knockings of The Style Council had been so excruciating that record label Polydor refused to release the band’s final album – the deep house experiment that was “Modernism: A New Decade”. It finally got a release a decade later.

Two albums into his solo career though and Weller was back with the “Wild Wood” single, a bold statement so early on. A mellow, reflective, mature sound, it demonstrated Weller’s restored confidence. It surely couldn’t have been written during The Jam years? Only “English Rose” from “All Mod Cons” comes close. It’s strange to consider that in a recording career of forty-five years standing, the vast majority of that time has seen Weller as a solo artist such was the impact of The Jam (and to a lesser extent The Style Council). Paul has now released sixteen solo studio albums the most recent being 2021’s “Fat Pop (Volume 1)”. Six of them have gone to No 1 and seven to No 2.

Oh not this fella again! For a man peddling such a slight (some may say shite) tune, Bitty McLean got an awful lot of screen time on TOTP. Listen to “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” and tell me in all good conscience that it deserved three full studio appearances and that “Wild Wood” was only worthy of thirty seconds as a Breaker. You can’t. I’m sure Bitty is a nice bloke but his song was crud. Just awful.

What on earth was happening here?! Well, surprise surprise! It’s Cilla Black and here’s our Graham to explain what the chuff this was all about…

…actually it’s me and not Graham but I do have some details for you. We may predominantly have known Cilla for her TV work throughout the 80s and 90s but she was also a singer and pop star with a huge back catalogue. In fact, she was the most successful UK female recording artist of the 60s and, as host Mark Franklin rather generalised in his intro, had been on TOTP “loads of times”. However, she hadn’t had a major hit record since 1971 so what was she doing on the show now? The answer was that she was promoting her new album called “Through The Years”. I say new but it was a hotchpotch of tracks (autocorrect turned hotchpotch into ‘horrible’ and I was tempted to leave it!) including re-recordings of her old hits, cover versions, some new material and three duets with Cliff Richard, Barry Manilow and Dusty Springfield.

The title track was released as a single which Cilla performs here and the comments on Twitter in reaction to it were almost all negative if not out and out insults. I mean it is a terrible song, a nasty re-write of “Wind Beneath My Wings” to my ears. Incidentally, Nancy Griffiths’ “From A Distance” was one of the cover versions on the album which both Bette Midler (who had a hit with “Wind…”) and the aforementioned Cliff Richard also covered. Neither the single nor the album were hits peaking at No 54 and No 41 respectively.

And yet…Cilla wasn’t always crap. I know someone who swears by her 1968 hit “Step Inside Love” and he’s right – it’s great. Cilla sadly died in 2015 after a stroke caused her to fall at her home in Spain.

And still Culture Beat top the charts with “Mr. Vain” despite the efforts of hip-hop soul (Mary J. Blige), grunge (Stone Temple Pilots) and even Cilla Black to challenge Eurodance as the dominant music genre of 1993. I don’t think Simon Mayo had anything to do with the release of this single but it could have been written about him.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	2 Unlimited	Faces	Faeces more like – no
2	Tina Turner	Disco Inferno	Nah
3	Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine	Lean On Me I Won’t Fall Over	I did not
4	Kenny Thomas	Trippin” On Your Love	No
5	Terence Trent D’Arby	She Kissed Me	Liked it, didn’t buy it
6	New Order	World (Price Of Love)	Nope
7	Mary J. Blige	Real Love	Not really my bag
8	Stone Temple Pilots	Plush	Negative
9	Paul Weller	Wild Wood	Not the single but I had the album
10	Bitty McLean	It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)	Never!
11	Cilla Black	Through The Years	As if
12	Culture Beat	Mr. Vain	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001crzy/top-of-the-pops-02091993

TOTP 26 AUG 1993

Posted on October 9, 2022 by 80stastic

August and indeed the Summer of 1993 is coming to an end and so is something else – my time at the Our Price store in Rochdale. After an immensely enjoyable twelve months as Assistant Manager there, the powers that be wanted to move me. In theory, I should have been pleased about this. It was a transfer to a much bigger store at Stockport which, though not a promotion, reflected well on how area management viewed me. Plus, Stockport was a much shorter commute than schleping all the way over to Rochdale. I didn’t want to go though. I really liked the team where I was and the size of the shop was manageable with a great profile in the town. The move to Stockport would prove to be a short-lived one but that’s enough about my personal circumstances; what about the music?

Well, we start with some Therapy? who someone in the TOTP production team must have really liked as they seemed to be on the show regularly in 1993. I think this is their third studio appearance already which isn’t bad going for a noisy rock band on prime time TV. This single is “Opal Mantra” which was nothing to do with those 70s sweets Opal Fruits that became Statburst but rather a pun on the name of the German sports car model Opel Manta. I didn’t pay much attention to Therapy? at the time but listening back to them what I’ve noticed is that they always seem to have too many words in their lyrics to fit in with the tune. Probably just me of course but anyway.

As far as I can tell this was a stand alone single prior to the release of their fourth studio album “Troublegum” the following year although bizarrely the two singles released before “Opel Mantra” both made it onto the album.

Now here’s a song that always reminds me of late Summer/ early Autumn 1993 whenever I hear it except if I was to hear the original version of it, I probably wouldn’t recognise it at all. “Right Here” was first released by SWV (Sisters With Voices) back in 1992 but only in America. Despite being a hit on the R&B chart, it made little impression on the Billboard Hot 100.

A US No 1 record later in “Weak” and the track was given another chance but this time with an added sample from another song – “Human Nature” by Michael Jackson. And so it came to pass that the version we would all come to know was rechristened as “Right Here (Human Nature Remix)”. Who’s idea was it to mash up SWV and Jacko? Well, it was credited to Teddy Riley but weren’t there some bootleg copies in existence well before the official release creating a buzz around the track?

“Human Nature” was, of course, from Jackson’s “Thriller” album and was one of the seven singles taken from it in 1983. Curiously though, it was never given a UK release back then so would it have been less well known in the UK? If true, it makes SWV’s hit even more impressive but I think it’s a difficult idea to sell that the biggest album of all time contains tracks that some countries were oblivious to. It went fifteen times platinum in the UK after all.

“Right Here (Human Nature Remix)” would rise to No 3 in the UK – easily their biggest hit over here – and would only be kept off the top spot in the US by another artist also on this TOTP.

From Sisters With Voices to The Sisters Of Mercy (do you think that was deliberate by the show’s producers?) who are in the studio with their latest single “Under The Gun”. Not only was this their latest single but as we stand in October 2022, it is also the band’s last single. Yes, incredibly, despite the band being an going concern to this day, they have not released any new material since this track which was to promote their second Greatest Hits album “A Slight Case Of Overbombing”. I think I’ve discussed this before but this situation arose out of a dispute with their label EastWest who eventually agreed to receive the final two albums owed by the band according to their contract via the Andrew Eldritch vehicle SSV (almost another link with SWV). Allegedly standing for Screw Shareholder Value, the albums were made with industrial sonic pioneers Xmas Deutschland’s Peter Bellendir and were largely unlistenable loops of Eldritch’s verbal musings. Despite being free of EastWest since 1997, no new Sisters Of Mercy product has been forthcoming.

As for “Under The Gun”, apparently that’s Terri Nunn up there with Eldritch. Yeah, the two-tone haired singer from Berlin of “Take My Breath Away” fame. She looked a bit different seven years on from that global hit but you can hear her influence all over this track. In fact it’s pretty good up until the point where Eldritch does his…’thing’ whatever that is (a Goth rap?). I’ve always considered Eldritch a bizarre yet intriguing figure and found myself wondering what he looks like today. So I Googled him. His Wikipedia picture suggests that he has now gone bald but he still retains those sunglasses that project an air of otherworldliness. I once sat on a train from Sunderland to Newcastle around 1987 next to a bald man wearing shades dressed in black who had a tape recorder with him and for the entire journey played a tape out loud that the whole carriage could hear that was of demonic chanting, blood curdling screams and general devil worship. I was too freaked out to say anything to him but he did turn it off when the guard checked his ticket only to turn it back on once he had left.

Anyway, back to Eldritch though who has tried to distance himself and the band from accusations of gothness and is on record as stating:

“I’m constantly confronted by representatives of popular culture who are far more goth than we, yet I have only to wear black socks to be stigmatised as the demon overlord.”
“Sisters – VirginNet Interview”. Thesistersofmercy.com. Archived from the original on 20 August 2001

“Under The Gun” peaked at No 19.

Next the point where it looked like Ace Of Base might not be the next big pop sensation that was suggested by their monster No 1 “All That She Wants” earlier in the year. So big was that single that it spent sixteen weeks on the charts and was still selling so well that the follow up “Wheel Of Fortune” had its release delayed. I’m guessing that their label London Records would have been hoping for and indeed maybe expecting a bigger chart hit than the No 20 peak achieved here. The outlook would get worse when the title track to their album “Happy Nation” would barely dint the Top 40 when released in November. Luckily for label and band but decidedly unluckily for music fans, that trend was reversed spectacularly in 1994 when they got to No 2 with “The Sign”.

I have to admit to not knowing how this one went and after watching this TOTP performance, I’m still not sure. The very definition of lightweight, it barely registers at all. And those nasally, whiny vocals are the musical equivalent of fingernails being scraped down a blackboard! As for the prop that was the wheel of fortune in the background…talk about lacklustre! It just has some random numbers around the edge. Why weren’t the coloured segments filled in with what you could win?! It didn’t look like it even had the flicker thing that determines which segment you’ve landed on once the spinning has stopped. Bah!

And so to that much trumpeted (by host Tony Dortie if nobody else) song by Meatloaf. Who would have thought that in a year dominated by Eurodance crud and a trend for ragga/dancehall tunes that the biggest selling single of the year would belong to the Loaf. I mean, it’s not as if he had a brilliant track record for massive hit singles in the UK. His last Top 10 hit had been “Dead Ringer For Love” in 1981 and of the eleven singles released after that until this point, only three had made the Top 40 and none of those had managed a position higher than No 17. Yes, of course “Bat Out Of Hell” was one of the biggest selling albums in history but that was already fifteen years old by 1993. A Meatloaf revival was not on the cards.

Hang on though! “Bat Out Of Hell” you say. What if we did…I don’t know…”Bat Out Of Hell II” to help revive his fortunes? Presumably that’s a close approximation of what long standing songwriting partner Jim Steinman said about Meatloaf in 1993. Yes, a return to the original hit formula (not that much of his other stuff sounded any different) was the order of the day and so it came to pass that “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell” would make Marvin Lee Aday a huge star all over again. The first single from the project was “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” continuing a long line of ludicrous song titles that occur regularly in Meatloaf’s back catalogue. There’s something odd here though as despite this preview on TOTP on a show in August, as far as I can tell the single wasn’t released until October and after the album was released in September. That can’t be right can it?

Anyway, I think I’ll leave it there for now as this will be at No 1 soon enough and for seven (!) weeks so I’ll just leave it with RIP Meatloaf for now.

We’re back to multiple Breakers again this week after just two in the last show and we start with Lenny Kravitz and a third single from his “Are You Gonna Go My Way” album called “Heaven Help”. This is yet again another song I don’t recall even though it made the charts to the tune of No 20. Some of the music press described it as showing Kravitz’s soul influences specifically Curtis Mayfield and Isley Brothers and I can hear why. It’s got a nice feel to it and I’m guessing it got decent daytime airplay at the time. I should probably check out the album. After all, I did but his previous one “Mama Said”.

OK so I’m aware there was a rap/hip-hop outfit called Onyx but that was/is the extent of my knowledge. Until now. Hailing from Queens, New York City, they were formed by Fredro Starr (yes I had to double take on that name as well!), Sonny Seeza and Big DS. This single (“Slam”) would make No 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 – not just the R&B chart, the mainstream chart – quite remarkable for a rap record. It’s also widely regarded as being responsible for introducing slam dancing or moshing to hip-hop as per the promo video. Wait, didn’t House Of Pain already do that with “Jump Around?”

Anyway, Wikipedia tells me that they were notable for loud screaming, aggression, fighting with each other and then these two characteristics which look slightly odd in the written word…rapping with grimy voices and bald head fashion. What?! Surely grime wasn’t a musical genre back then so what were grimy voices exactly? And bald head fashion…? To be honest, if I wanted to listen to a record called “Slam” then I’d go for this…

Yes, there were two Joey Lawrence singles that charted in the UK unbelievably. After “Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix” came “I Can’t Help Myself” – his song titles were a little egocentric. This one could easily be the template for every Backstreet Boys song ever which is fine if you like that sort of thing I guess but it obviously did nothing for me.

“I Can’t Help Myself” peaked at No 27.

Almost under the radar, Terence Trent D’arby was having quite a year in 1993 on the sly. Nothing like the impact of 1987/88 when he burst into the pop world fully formed from nowhere to both critical and commercial success but quite a year all the same. After looking like he had wrecked his musical career with the poorly received sophomore album “Neither Fish Nor Flesh”, to manage to resurrect himself as a chart act again was quite a feat. The “Symphony Or Damn” album went Top 10 and would produce four hit singles of which “She Kissed Me” was the third. Those singles peaked at:

14 – 14 – 16 – 18

Like I said, not the remarkable success of those early years but he was consistent. Given the quality of the 1993 singles, they probably should have been bigger hits, “She Kissed Me” being a case in point. Slick and with a killer chorus, it also showcased his diversity given how different it was to previous single “Delicate”. As with Lenny Kravitz earlier, maybe I should investigate the TTD back catalogue further although I don’t think I’ll start with the aforementioned “Neither Fish Nor Flesh”.

I think this is the first and only cover version on this TOTP after what seemed like an endless conveyor belt of them recently. Just like Kim Wilde’s treatment of “If I Can’t Have You” the other week, this one is also of a song from the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. Tina Turner’s take on The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno” featured in another film also – Tina’s biopic What’s Love Got To Do With It. It certainly suits Tina’s raspy vocal and I think she does a decent job with it. I wonder though if her record company had faith in the track’s chart potential as they made the B-side “I Don’t Wanna Fight” which was her previous hit from just a few weeks before. That was a standard record company practice as I recall to try and insure against a flop record. It worked (kind of) as “Disco Inferno” made No 12.

Bit of a big deal next as we get Mariah Carey in the studio. She was already a superstar in America after a string of No 1 singles and although UK record buyers hadn’t embraced her quite as keenly, this was still a big exclusive. I’m not sure if she had her reputation as a diva at this point but if she was a bit of a nightmare off camera, I wonder how she manifested it? Her tour riders are renowned for some explicit demands like hotel rooms having temperatures of precisely 75 degrees, being festooned with eight (not seven or nine) tall leafy plants and kitted out with Joe Malone candles (and certainly none of those Gwyneth Paltrow mucky scent ones)

To be fair to Mariah, she seems quite low key in this performance of “Dreamlover” with a dress down wardrobe and a discreet trio of backing singers. She holds back on the vocals as well until the very last few notes when she gives her pipes an airing. Somehow this TOTP appearance only managed to nudge the single up one place to a high of No 9 but it went to No 1 in the US keeping the aforementioned SWV off top spot.

Freddie Mercury’s reign at the top of the charts is over and he has been replaced by Culture Beat and their “Mr. Vain” single. Was this the peak of Eurodance or its nadir? More irritating than “No Limits” by 2 Unlimited or even better than Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”? The man behind Culture Beat was German DJ and producer Torsten Fenslau who tragically died in a car crash aged 29 barely two months after this TOTP aired.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Therapy?	Opal Mantra	No
2	SWV	Right Here (Human Nature Remix)	Nope
3	The Sisters Of Mercy	Under The Gun	I did not
4	Ace Of Base	Wheel Of Fortune	As if
5	Meatloaf	I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)	I’d do anything for music but I wouldn’t buy that
6	Lenny Kravitz	Heaven Help	Negative
7	Onyx	Slam	Nah
8	Joey Lawrence	I Can’t Help Myself	I had no such problems with restraint when it came to not buying this record
9	Terence Trent D’arby	She Kissed Me	Good song, didn’t buy it
10	Tina Turner	Disco Inferno	Disco Infer-NO
11	Mariah Carey	Dreamlover	Sorry Mariah, it’s a no
12	Culture Beat	Mr. Vain	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001crzw/top-of-the-pops-26081993

TOTP 12 AUG 1993

Posted on October 2, 2022 by 80stastic

If it’s mid August then it must be the start of the new football season and 1993 was no different. I didn’t have high hopes for my beloved Chelsea for the 1993/94 season after the previous year’s bucketload of mid table mediocrity but on the day this TOTP aired, we signed Gavin Peacock for 1.2 million from Newcastle United which I was excited about. Gavin would prove to be an instant hit by scoring on his debut two days later. However, Chelsea lost the game and it would prove to be another season of highs and lows characterised by our getting to the FA Cup final for the first time in 24 years and then losing it 0-4. Crushing. I wonder how many highs and lows there’ll be in this TOTP?

We start with a massive low. What the Barney Rubble was going on here?! I thought we might have managed to get away with just a short glimpse of Green Jellÿ when they appeared in the Breakers with their first and biggest hit “Three Little Pigs”. No such luck as they have made themselves available to open this show with their new single “Anarchy In The UK”. Their take on the Sex Pistols’ punk classic is, as my friend Robin would say, like pissing from the roof of a multi story car park – wrong on so many levels.

First of all, don’t arse about with “Anarchy In The UK”. Whatever you may think of the Pistols’ debut single, you can’t deny its place in (punk) rock history. Secondly, if you are going to mess with it, at least retain Johnny Rotten’s iconic (albeit phonically incorrect) phrasing. It’s “I am an anti-Christ, I am an anar-kaist”. Who are you Mr Green Jellÿ to correct Johnny Rotten? Thirdly, this whole Flintstones thing had already been done before by The Screaming Blue Messiahs with their 1988 Top 30 hit “I Wanna Be A Flintstone”. Hardly original. Fourthly, the costumes. Obviously that’s meant to be Fred and Barney but who’s the third one meant to be? Bam-Bam? Just crap. Oh and was it really wise to accessorise Barney’s costume with a skinhead look and ‘Oi’ on the side of his head given some of the links to white nationalist groups like the National Front the movement was perceived to have. Finally, it had zero musical value but worse than that even, it wasn’t funny. At all.

Rather predictably the song would make it onto the soundtrack to the 1994 live action movie The Flintstones alongside that Screaming Blue Messiahs track and “(Meet) The Flintstones” by The B-52s who renamed themselves The BC-52s for the release. How we laughed.

Another low now as we return to that horrible sub genre of dance music, the reworking of pop songs as dance floor fillers. There was a lot of this sort of nonsense around this time from the likes of Undercover and Rage and now here was Sarah Washington with a danced up version of “I Will Always Love You”. What a nasty thing this was and totally unnecessary. Whitney Houston’s version of the Dolly Parton classic had been No 1 for ten weeks between Dec ‘92 and Feb ‘93. Did we really need to hear another version of it so soon?

Apparently we did as Sarah Washington’s version made No 12. She attempted to repeat the trick with her follow up, a dance version of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” but fortunately that didn’t make the Top 40. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of this movement as 1995 saw Nicki French go Top 5 with a danced up version of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart”. Oh the horror.

It’s a hat-trick of lows as we get “River Of Dreams” by Billy Joel. I said last time this was on the show that it’s one of Billy’s worst ever compositions and I haven’t changed my mind in the meanwhile. Of course, that’s just my humble opinion and others may have a different take. Someone who definitely did was Peter from Spearfish, South Dakota who had this to say on the songfacts.com website:

I think God was really speaking to Billy Joel but Billy Joel decided to ignore God and it’s his own fault if he ends up in hell but you never know
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/billy-joel/the-river-of-dreams

Gulp! Well, Billy does include some biblical references in the song and he does consider himself an atheist so maybe those sorts of comments were always going to happen.

“River Of Dreams” peaked at No 3.

Dear God! I think we’ve hit the lowest of the lows as we encounter Bad Boys Inc. Inevitably, given the rise to the top of Take That, boy bands were springing up left, right and centre in the 90s. Bad Boys Inc were one of the first of these pretenders to cling onto their coat tails hitting immediately with debut single “Don’t Talk About Love”. The work of evil pop mastermind Ian Levine, who himself had produced Take That’s first three singles, they went down the same promotion route as Gary Barlow and co doing nightclub PAs to get their name out there. They also seemed to have adopted their dance moves and stage set up with the lead singer doing all the vocal lifting and the other three just…well…dancing. The song is the usual teeny bop by numbers fare but really they didn’t have anything to make them stand out and certainly nothing to rival Take That. They had one hit wonder written all over them and yet they notched up six chart hits in total including one Top 10! Even their name was terrible. Was it meant to channel some of that other boy band that were the actual rivals to Take That at the time East 17? Bad Boys Inc? Bad Boys Stink more like.

As Kevin Rowland once sang, “Let’s Get This Straight From The Start”. Yes, “Mr Vain” by Culture Beat does sound like Snap!’s “Rhythm Is A Dancer”. There are more similarities though. Both songs went to No 1 in the UK and both were made by German Eurodance acts. There always been a couple of things I never understood about “Mr. Vain” though. Who was ‘Mr. Raider’ as referenced in the lyrics and why does female vocalist Tania Evans insist on being called ‘Mr. Vain’?

https://youtu.be/W7P5fxYssG8

Some Breakers now and we start with Ice Cube (an ice breaker?) and “Check Yo Self”. The man behind many of the lyrics on legendary NWA album “Straight Outta Compton”, Ice Cube had left the band acrimoniously in 1989 and was already onto his third solo album by this point. “The Predator” was a No 1 record in America selling 193,000 copies in its first week. This track was the third single to be released from it and gave Ice Cube his second consecutive UK Top 40 hit after “It Was A Good Day” when it peaked at No 36.

As host Tony Dortie says in his intro, the track heavily borrows from the mother of all rap tunes “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel. Widely recognised as the song that took rap into the mainstream, its influence can also be found in work by artists like Genesis (the laugh in “Mama”) and Robbie Williams (the “it’s like a jungle” line in “Millennium”).

This next one literally only exists for me on this 30 seconds clip. I can’t recall it at all from 1993 and I can’t find anything much about the act online in 2022. To be fair, their name doesn’t aid an internet search – what did I expect to find if I put Ali And Frazier into Google? Whoever they were/are, their song was a cover of the Althea And Donna 1978 classic “Uptown Top Ranking”. Not a straight cover though you understand. This was 1993 so they ragga-fied it with a rap and tried to update the sound by including that horrible sax parp from recent No 1 “All That She Wants” by Ace Of Base. There’s also a hint of “That’s The Way (I Like It)” by KC And The Sunshine Band. Just…why?

Like Althea and Donna, “Uptown Top Ranking” was Ali and Frazier’s only hit when it peaked at No 33. Unlike Althea and Donna, nobody remembers the musical version of Ali and Frazier.

Whatever you may think of Jay Kay, he was ahead of his time when it came to green issues. He was the funk version of Julian “Salt Water” Lennon. “Emergency On Planet Earth” was the title track of Jamiroquai’s debut album and also the third track to be released from it as a single. Sonically, it was very much in the same vein as it’s two predecessors but somehow I think I liked it better than those other tracks. The sci-fi themed video stands up pretty well although it’s dated by the inclusion of a public pay phone.

This would be the last time we’d see Jamiroquai for a whole year bar a re-release of debut flop single “When You Gonna Learn”. When they did return, it was with “Space Cowboy” which sounded the same as everything else they’d released.

Talking of debut singles being re-released, here’s “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” by Spin Doctors. Originally out in October of 1992, it made No 17 on the US charts but it wasn’t released over here until “Two Princes” had been a hit. I’d forgotten what a nifty tune this is. Some great slap bass playing and a searing guitar riff make for a great groove (man!). It should have been a bigger hit than its No 23 peak.

Songwriter and lead vocalist Chris Barron was initially subjected to accusations of misogyny due to the song’s lyrics (the opening line is “It’s been a whole lot easier since the bitch left town”) with many assuming it was written about an ex-girlfriend but it was actually about a toxic relationship with his stepmother. “The song is really about life being short so we should all be nice to one other” he told Sky magazine in an interview.

The track would turn up on Sesame Street in 1995 as “Little Miss Count Along”. There’s no bigger accolade.

Finally! A song on a ragga tip in 1993 that I didn’t mind! I refer to Apache Indian and his song “Boom Shack-A-Lak” which was a track from his “Nuff Vibes EP”. Inevitably, people made comparisons with it and Shaggy’s “Oh Carolina” and Apache Indian (real name Steven Kapur) himself references this in the BBC documentary Top Of The Pops – The Story Of 1993. He admits that he was influenced by the likes of the Shaggy, Chaka Demus and Pliers etc who were releasing reggae style songs with a 60s pop twist to them and so thought he’d have a brash at that himself. His breakthrough hit from earlier in the year “Arranged Marriage” had been nothing like “Boom Shack-A-Lak” (a made up word with a similar meaning to ‘Wagwan’ Kapur says in the documentary) with its Bhangra rhythms and instrumentation but he could see where the money trail was going and duly followed.

Cautious not to appear to be treading on his buddy Shaggy’s toes, he played him the track and just about asked his permission to release it. Being the magnanimous fellow he is, Shaggy wasn’t at all bothered that Kapur appeared to be “nicking his shit” (to quote Shaggy) and the rest was history. Easily Apache Indian’s biggest hit, it went to No 5 in the UK and has been used extensively in film such as the Dumb And Dumber movies and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (surely they should have used a song by Shaggy?!). It sounds like it should have been included in one of the Austin Powers movies but as far as I can tell it wasn’t used.

I’m guessing hopes were high in the offices of Aswad and Yazz’s record labels for the rejuvenating powers of this cover version of Ace’s “How Long”. With both artists’ careers in need of a shot in the arm, surely a reggaed-up take on an airplay classic would do the trick? ‘No!’ was the resounding answer from the record buying public as despite this TOTP appearance, it got no higher than its peak this week of No 31. Yazz looks pretty different to her “The Only Way Is Up” heyday with her short peroxide blonde cut replaced by a longer hairdo tied up at the back. When she went to get that short crop, her hairdresser looked at her cascading tresses and said ‘How long?’. I’ll get me coat.

Take That are dethroned at the top of the charts as Freddie Mercury takes over with “Living On My Own”. I just didn’t get this. To me, it’s a nothing song that probably deserved no more than its chart high of No 50 when originally released in 1985. OK, you could make a case for a surge in record sales when an artist dies but in Freddie’s case that was back in 1991, one year and 263 days before this song made it to No 1. There had already been two Freddie solo singles released posthumously and neither got anywhere near the top of the charts so why this one? Was it to do with the No More Brothers remix? Well, whatever the record had, it would turn out to be the last ever entry for Freddie as a solo artist in the UK Top 40 singles chart.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Green Jellÿ	Anarchy In The UK	Never!
2	Sarah Washington	I Will Always Love You	No chance
3	Billy Joel	River Of Dreams	Not likely
4	Bad Boys Inc	Don’t Talk About Love	NO!
5	Culture Beat	Mr. Vain	I did not
6	Ice Cube	Check Yo Self	No
7	Ali And Frazier	Uptown Top Ranking	I’d rather get punched in the face
8	Jamiroquai	Emergency On Planet Earth	No but my wife had the album
9	Spin Doctors	Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong	No but maybe I should have
10	Apache Indian	Boom Shack-A-Lak	It was fun but no
11	Aswad / Yazz	How Long	Too long – no
12	Freddie Mercury	Living On My Own	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001cjqv/top-of-the-pops-12081993

TOTP 05 AUG 1993

Posted on September 28, 2022 by 80stastic

I started the previous post talking about the poor state of the BBC’s musical output in 1993 and the landscape altering changes that were coming to both Radio 1 and TOTP. Well, one of them has just happened ahead of schedule. Radio 1 DJ and pretty much the embodiment of the comedy characters Smashie and Nicey Dave Lee Travis resigned on air three days after this TOTP aired. Apparently he was due to leave the station in ten weeks time anyway when his contract ran out but so irate was the ‘Hairy Cornflake’ about what was going on in the corridors of power at the station that he chose to have his own little private or rather very public moment of venting.

“…and I really want to put the record straight at this point and I thought you ought to know – changes are being made here which go against my principles and I just cannot agree with them”
“Profile: Dave Lee Travis”. Aircheck Tracker. Archived from the original on 22 October 2009. Retrieved 13 November 2008.

DLT was referring to the changes being ushered in by new controller in waiting Matthew Bannister that would lead to a massive overhaul of the station and its presenters. Simon Bates, Gary Davies, Alan Freeman, Bob Harris and Paul Gambaccini would follow him out of the door soon after. Eventually even Steve Wright whom Bannister had put on the breakfast show slot would resign* ushering in the era of the self styled saviour of Radio 1 Chris Evans. Heaven help us.

*Writing this coincidentally on the day of Steve Wright’s last ever afternoon show on Radio 2

TOTP would undergo its own major transformation a few months on from the comings and goings at Radio 1 but for the moment it was business as usual. Let’s see who was doing the rounds this week…

Well, there’s Juliet Roberts opening the show with her single “Caught In The Middle” for starters. Long before this hit, Juliet had a gig on a TV show called Rockschool. Nothing to do with Jack Black, it was a BBC programme that ran for four years and showed viewers techniques for making rock and pop music using guitar, keyboards, bass, drums etc.

I don’t remember this at all but by the comments against some of the clips on YouTube, the 80s kids loved it. It did have some pretty big names appear on the show such as Gary Moore, Vince Clarke, The Communards and Midge Ure. The presenters were pretty wooden but they were good musicians. Guitarist Deirdre Cartwright in the thumbnail below had been in a band called Painted Lady who would go on to become Girlschool. Play the opening song in the clip below. It sounds like prog-poppers It Bites who knew their way around a tune or two…

The clip below features Juliet (1:56) talking about singing styles. She also co-hosted a Channel 4 show called Solid Soul that was basically a retooling of America’s Soul Train.

All that work in front of the camera should have made her TOTP appearance here a doddle. She looks pretty confident for sure and nice to see an almost totally female backing band behind her (I think the drummer is a bloke). The 1993 trend of the tall hat started by Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes carries on with Juliet’s choice of headgear. Top (hat) stuff.

What on earth is going on here?! Daniel O’Donnell on TOTP?! At a time when Matthew Bannister was lurking the corridors of Radio 1 on a dinosaur hunt to turn the station back to its original raison d’être of being for ‘young listeners’, what was the natural successor to Val Doonican doing on the BBC’s prime time pop music show?! Bizarre doesn’t begin to cover it. Even host Mark Franklin sounds surprised when he introduces him.

Look, I know Daniel O’Donnell has a massively loyal fan base who swear by him and he wasn’t doing any harm by giving them what they wanted to hear but in terms of the symbiosis between the BBC’s two main musical arms, it seemed like an outlier at best. To put it into context, it wouldn’t be long before Radio 1 Head of Production Trevor Dann would ban Status Quo records from being played on the station.

“Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love” was only O’Donnell’s fourth single release and he would only ever release eighteen in a fourteen year period fifteen of which would make the UK Top 40. Albums were a different matter altogether. Check out these numbers:

Studio albums: 38
Compilation albums: 13
Live albums: 4

Wow! That’s a lot of Daniel O’Donnell! Big props by the way to the floor managers for this show for getting the studio audience to scream at Daniel as if he was a member of Take That.

The Madonna video for “Rain” again?! This is the third time in four weeks! And it was a non-mover this week (albeit within the Top 10)! Overkill much? It would get no higher despite all this exposure. I said in a recent post that you only had to look at the fact that all five singles from the “Erotica” album made the Top 10 in the UK as evidence that she was still current, popular and relevant at this time. However, what I didn’t say was that four of them (the four consecutive releases after the title track) failed to make the Top 5, the first time that had ever happened. She wouldn’t have another No 1 record until “Frozen” five years later.

One place higher than Madonna we find Urban Cookie Collective with “The Key The Secret” and unlike her Madgesty, they are on the up. Their ride up the charts so far has been as follows:

40 – 29 – 20 – 11 – 6

They would rise to No 2 the following week where they would stay for two weeks kept off the top spot by Freddie Mercury. It would then spend the next three weeks inside the Top 10 and a further three inside the Top 40 before finally dropping out.

The other day the tweet below appeared on my timeline:

Mental note to oneself – when in office don’t randomly pipe up ‘I’ve got the secret’ when someone says, ‘I’ve got the key.’ It leads to confused looks and questions about what secret you know. Not everyone has song lyrics from 1993 still playing in their head.
— Lucy Mitchell (@LucyMitchAuth) September 27, 2022

The replies to Lucy’s tweet showed that there were loads of us with similar lines from songs that we pull out automatically given the correct prompt. Mine and my wife’s include “(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew” by Rock Steady Crew and “Fresh” by Kool And The Gang. Within the replies to Lucy’s tweet, someone managed to get in another 1993 reference:

At a wedding once and a bridesmaid stands to do a reading entitled ‘What is Love?’ To which my husband whispers ‘baby don’t hurt me’ I don’t think our row heard any of the reading
— Bronagh (@BristowBronagh) September 28, 2022

The well worn tale of soap star to pop idol has another chapter. How many had already made that transformation by August 1993? Well, off the top of my head there’s Kylie and Jason obviously, Kylie’s sister Dannii, Craig McLachlan, Stefan Dennis (!) and that’s just from Neighbours. If we look closer to home, we find perhaps where this whole phenomenon began with another resident of the aforementioned Albert Square. Seven years prior to this, Anita Dobson took “Anyone Can Fall In Love” into the Top 5 starting a flurry of EastEnders chancing their arms as pop sensations. Nick Berry, Letitia Dean and Paul Medford, Sophie Lawrence all had hits of varying size whilst there were also some feeble failures from the likes of Tom Watt and Peter Dean. None of them though seemed to have the credibility that Michelle Gayle had.

She’d been on our screens as Hattie Tavernier for over three years by this point but left Albert Square to pursue a pop career full time. Her debut single was “Looking Up” and it was no crappy cover version designed to deliver a one-off hit. I could imagine someone like Dina Carroll, Kim Appleby or even Louise post Eternal performing it. An uplifting, catchy chorus aligned with a well placed one word sample (‘Rejoice!’), it sounded current and relevant and well…on the money for 1993. Michelle herself displays no signs of imposter syndrome in her confident TOTP turn but then this wasn’t her debut musical performance…

https://youtu.be/e1e9mDIar0I

Go to 18:25

Fresh ‘n’ Fly there wrekkin’ the mike (PSYCHE!). “Looking Up” made No 11 (not quite the Top 3 that host Mark Franklin predicted then) and its success was enough to convince Michelle and her label RCA that she should quit EastEnders to be a full time pop star. She would go on to have seven Top 40 hits (including her most well known tune “Sweetness”) and recorded two albums before leaving RCA to sign with EMI where she was the victim of an artist rostering reshuffle and never released any recordings with them. She has returned to music periodically with a second place finish in 2003’s Reborn In The USA retro music contest and even had a go at Eurovision in 2008.

They’ve dropped the number of Breakers from five to four this week (thank god!) and we start with a collaboration between two artists at either end of the alphabet. Aswad and Yazz were at school together Mark Franklin tells us and they looked each other up again to record a cover of Ace’s 1975 hit “How Long”. We’ve seen the cover version as career revitaliser strategy countless times before but both Aswad and Yazz’s fortunes certainly needed a tonic in 1993. Neither had managed a hit in three years and in the case of Yazz especiall, her career was a mess. After the huge success of “The Only Way Is Up” and the “Wanted” album at the end of the 80s, she’d record two albums for two different labels neither of which was released. “How Long” was the lead single from her third LP attempt that did see the light of day but “One On One” disappeared without trace leaving only that Ace cover to remind us of Yazz’s name. It would be her final chart hit when it peaked at No 31. Aswad though would score a Top 5 hit with “Shine” the following year. They were in the news for tragic reasons recently when founding member Drummie Zeb died aged just 62.

Next a huge dance hit from The Goodmen or is it The Good Men or is it Chocolate Puma or even Zki & Dobre? Confused? Well, these were just a few of the names that Dutch DJ and production duo René ter Horst and Gaston Steenkist went by. Not names that roll off the tongue naturally – that may explain the aliases. If their real names aren’t familiar then their tune “Give It Up” surely is to anybody frequenting the club scene around this time as it was huge. An African rhythm combined with that regimented drum sound was ubiquitous and led to it being a global hit especially in the US where it topped the dance chart. So massive was it that it crossed over into the mainstream and became a No 5 hit on the UK Top 40. Given its success, it’s rather surprising that it was never shown on TOTP again. Maybe they didn’t know what to do with it. Its impact led to it being sampled two years later by Simply Red for their No 1 hit “Fairground” but let’s not go there eh?

https://youtu.be/s3YGonwsQuI

Talking of No 1 records, here comes a future one courtesy of Culture Beat and “Mr Vain”. This lot were yet more Eurodance chart botherers and as they will be chart toppers shortly, I’ll keep my comments about them in this brief Breakers appearance…well…brief. Here’s a nice little bit of pop trivia for now though. “Mr Vain” was the first record to got o No 1 in the UK that wasn’t released on 7’’ vinyl.

Bon Jovi complete this week’s Breakers with the fourth single from their “Keep The Faith” album. Was “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” just a rewrite of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”? Bit harsh but then the band have incorporated the Stones song into their composition when performing it live so there must be some similarities structure wise. The black and white promo video features a number of scenes clearly meant as a tribute to / stolen directly from A Hard Day’s Night and also Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. I went there once and there are some incredible figures from history buried within it. Chopin, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde…and yet all anybody seemed interested in was the singer of The Doors. I saw many hand made signs saying ‘This way to Jim’ and at his actual grave, someone had laid not flowers but a nicely rolled joint. It’s what he would have wanted.

“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” peaked at No 17.

This week’s live by satellite performance is by UB40 and comes from the Garden State Arts Centre, New Jersey. It’s another pointless exercise as the only camera angle we get is of the band performing “Higher Ground” on a two level stage. Completely dull. Also completely dull was their song which was the second single from the “Promises And Lies” album.

This was a very commercially successful time for UB40. As Mark Franklin says, they’d just had a No 1 single in “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love With You” and the album was also a chart topper. By my reckoning, this was also the last really successful era of the band. There had been a few during their career – the heady days of their politically powerful first hits like “One In Ten”, their covers period of “Labour Of Love” and “Red Red Wine”, the chart topping collaboration with Chrissie Hynde on “I’ve Got You Babe” and then this 1993 spell. “Higher Ground” was a bit of a stinker though.

This episode of TOTP became ‘The UB40 Show’ by be end of it with Ali Campbell introducing the next act who was actually one of their mates. Bitty McLean was a tape operator at the band’s recording studio originally – the reggae Rick Astley then – before being promoted to co-producer and engineer for them. He even provided backing vocals for some of the “Promises And Lies” album. His debut single was a cover of a 1961 Fats Domino tune “It Keeps Rainin” which he retitled “It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)” presumably much to the annoyance of the TOTP graphics team.

I hated this as it was just more evidence to me of what a terrible year for music 1993 was turning out to be. Plastic reggae with a ragga style shout out at the start of it just to jump on that bandwagon. Horrible. As always, I was in the minority and the record soared to No 2 in the charts. Bitty would have a total of seven UK Top 40 hits.

A fourth and final week at the top of the heap for Take That with “Pray”. They needn’t have worried though as it was the first of eight No 1 singles in the first part of their career. They will be back in a few weeks with “Relight My Fire” accompanied by the dreadful Lulu.

dsfghjk

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Juliet Roberts	Caught In The Middle	Nope
2	Daniel O’Donnell	Whatever Happened To Old Fashioned Love	As if
3	Madonna	Rain	No
4	Urban Cookie Collective	The Key The Secret	I did not
5	Michelle Gayle	Looking Up	Negative
6	Aswad and Yazz	How Long	Nah
7	The Goodmen	Give It Up	No thanks
8	Culture Beat	Mr Vain	Never happening
9	Bon Jovi	I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead	No but I had a promo copy of the Keep The Faith album
10	UB40	Higher Ground	I did not
11	Bitty McLean	It Keeps Rainin’ (Tears From My Eyes)	Just awful – no
12	Take That	Pray	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001c94b/top-of-the-pops-05081993

TOTP Rewind – the 90s

My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 31 MAR 1994

Disclaimer

TOTP 13 JAN 1994

Disclaimer

TOTP 18 NOV 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 04 NOV 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 16 SEP 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 09 SEP 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 02 SEP 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 26 AUG 1993

Disclaimer

TOTP 12 AUG 1993

Disclaimer